Situation
Last time we observed that the simple approach is not sufficient to compile GnuPG developer version 2.5 on a Debian bookworm or Devuan daedalus system. This is due to the fact that this version needs more recent versions of libraries than provided by the distribution. The libraries themselves are available and can be downloaded from the GnuPG project, but we need to make them visible where and when they are needed.
Installation destination path
Whenever a piece of software is compiled and ready to be used, it should be installed to a dedicated location. Since we do not want to interfere with the distribution setup we choose the relative installation path install and the absolute path will result into /tmp/canary/install. Remember from last time where we are and create the chosen destination:
$ pwd /tmp/canary/compile/gnupg-2.5.5 $ mkdir /tmp/canary/install
Configuration with prefix
libassuan
cd ../libassuan-3.0.2 ./configure --prefix="/tmp/canary/install" make make install
libgpg-error
cd ../libgpg-error-1.51 ./configure --prefix="/tmp/canary/install" make make install
With this-+libgpg-error+- library we can compile libgcrypt.
libgcrypt-1.11.0
cd ../libgcrypt-1.11.0 ./configure --prefix="/tmp/canary/install" make make install
Now all missing parts from the gnupg configuration feedback are available.
gnupg I
cd ../gnupg-2.5.5 ./configure --prefix="/tmp/canary/install" echo "There is a new problem"
There is another library missing: libksba.
configure: *** *** You need libksba to build this program. *** This library is for example available at *** https://gnupg.org/ftp/gcrypt/libksba/ *** (at least version 1.6.3 using API 1 is required). ***
The required version 1.6.3 is provided by the distribution package libksba-dev but since we changed the configuration prefix it is not found anymore. This is odd. This does not happen in a similar situation with npth later. We need to either fine tune the configuration or build a self-contained environment. We chose the latter one:
libksba
cd ../libksba-1.6.7 ./configure --prefix="/tmp/canary/install" make make install
gnupg II
cd ../gnupg-2.5.5 ./configure --prefix="/tmp/canary/install" echo "There is another new problem"
Again there is a library missing: npth.:
configure: *** *** It is now required to build with support for the *** New Portable Threads Library (nPth). Please install this *** library first. The library is for example available at *** https://gnupg.org/ftp/gcrypt/npth/ *** (at least version 1.2 (API 1) is required). ***
The configuration would be fine with the distribution package libnpth0-dev installed, but we compile from the sources.
npth
cd ../npth-1.8 ./configure --prefix="/tmp/canary/install" make make install
Back to the main software again...
gnupg III
cd ../gnupg-2.5.5 ./configure --prefix="/tmp/canary/install" make make install
The smoke test
$ /tmp/canary/install/bin/gpg --version /tmp/canary/install/bin/gpg: error while loading shared libraries: libassuan.so.9: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
This is not the intended behaviour.
$ LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/tmp/canary/install/lib" /tmp/canary/install/bin/gpg --version gpg (GnuPG) 2.5.5 libgcrypt 1.11.0 Copyright (C) 2025 g10 Code GmbH License GNU GPL-3.0-or-later <https://gnu.org/licenses/gpl.html> This is free software: you are free to change and redistribute it. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law. Home: /home/alice/.gnupg Supported algorithms: Pubkey: RSA, Kyber, ELG, DSA, ECDH, ECDSA, EDDSA Cipher: IDEA, 3DES, CAST5, BLOWFISH, AES, AES192, AES256, TWOFISH, CAMELLIA128, CAMELLIA192, CAMELLIA256 Hash: SHA1, RIPEMD160, SHA256, SHA384, SHA512, SHA224 Compression: Uncompressed, ZIP, ZLIB
This is a first success. But there is a lot of fine tuning left to be done.
To be continued...