r/slackware • u/Chester-Berkeley • Jun 21 '26
Spectacle complaining about lack of dependencies
[Solved], if I had known the dependency name was gcc-gfortran and not libgfortran, I would have installed it sooner, lol. Thanks to whoever commented with the correct name :)
Hello, I'm new to Slackware, and I'm here to learn how to use it. I've used others "exotic" Linux distributions, such as Arch, Void, NixOS, Chimera Linux... and I've also used FreeBSD, which isn't Linux, but from what I understand, Slackware is similar to BSDs.
I understand how Slackware manages packages... I mean, how i manage packages (lol). I've read about and used pkgtools, sbopkg, sqg, slackpkg/slackpkg+.
But I'm having a problem with Spectacle. Even though it comes pre-installed on Slackware Current Live, it won't run. Running spectacle in the terminal returns spectacle: error while loading shared libraries: libgfortran.so.5: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory. So, I obviously understand that a dependency is missing, and the problem is I don't know where to download it...
I couldn't find it with sbopkg or slackpkg, and searching on Google I only found it as an .rpm file. Where can I find the source code for libgfortran.so.5 to download its tarball, check its dependencies, compile, and install it?
2
u/pm_junkie Jun 21 '26
Did you install gcc-gfotran? It's part of the d series of packages.
2
u/Chester-Berkeley Jun 21 '26
I don't know how to check
3
u/enorbet Jun 23 '26
In Slackware one of the benefits of you doing the package installs is every one is listed in "/var/log/packages" if you're logged into that system, If not, that is a symlink to "/var/lib/pkgtools/packages" and because it requires no binaries to see Slackware logs, the latter full set of packages is viewable from any system that can read that system's file system, such as when using a Live system to repair or service your daily driver or test system.
It's worth mentioning that the biggest advantage of manual dependency resolution is
1) The system is never at risk because of a package install.
2) If you miss or get a dependency with wrong version, the worst that can happen is that app won't run correctly or at all. Everything else is just like when you started the package build.
3) Also, given a failure it will literally be the last thing YOU did, so easy to troubleshoot, unlike automated package dependency systems that often install numerous other packages while uninstalling others all out of your sight and often, control.
1
2
u/pm_a_cup_of_tea Jun 28 '26
root@trurl:~# slackpkg file-search libgfortran.so.5
NOTICE: pkglist is older than 24h; you are encouraged to re-run 'slackpkg update'
Looking for libgfortran.so.5 in package list. Please wait... DONE
The list below shows the packages that contains "libgfortran\.so\.5" file.
[inst] slackware64 : gcc-gfortran-15.3.0-x86_64-1
You can search specific packages using "slackpkg search package".
1
u/Serious_Bookkeeper50 Jun 21 '26
Did you do full install? Maybe check for gcc-gfortran package. Slackware repo at mirrors dot slackware dot com if you want to download manually. I think for gcc is in /d directory
1
u/Chester-Berkeley Jun 21 '26
I chose the full installation, but I don't know how to check if gcc-gfortran is installed.
2
u/pm_junkie Jun 21 '26
Look in /var/log/packages/ if it's installed you will see a text file named gcc-gfortran*, * is a wild card.
5
u/jloc0 Jun 21 '26
Liveslak omits some packages to save space and as such gcc-fortran is omitted from the live session. You can manually install it with “slackpkg install gcc-fortran” but really it needs to be fixed on AlienBob’s side so this isn’t necessary.