Thanks for the clarification Lex.  Actually this ends up being my bad - I recalled there was a .deb file on the Geany site, but checking now I see it is source for Linux and installers for MacOS and Windows.  There was a PPA somewhere that had .deb versions of the latest releases, I'll have to check my notes and recall where that was.

So let me ask you a hypothetical question - assuming a .deb distribution comes to light, what do you expect would happen if I sudo dpkg -i geany-something.deb with 1.36 already installed?  Do I need to delete 1.36 first?  Same goes with building from source - delete the old version first?

Thanks again for all your help, and thanks very much to all those contributors that made Geany happen.

- Woody

On Sun, Nov 8, 2020 at 8:47 PM Lex Trotman <elextr@gmail.com> wrote:
On Mon, 9 Nov 2020 at 14:09, Woodrow Stool <woodrow.stool@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I think what the OP was asking was something like this:
>
> - Ubuntu 20.04
>
> - Geany 1.36 from the Ubuntu distro, installed with apt install geany
>
> - Now 1.37.1 is available.  It will be a long time before this hits the Ubuntu repo.  What is the best way to install it now, keeping my settings?

>> An upgrade won't touch any customising you did in your local configure
>> directories, but if you are one of those people who customised the
>> system files then yes it will overwrite them.  In that case you need
>> to copy the changes to a non-system configuration first and don't
>> touch system files again.

Ok, maybe saying "upgrade" might be confusing after having said there
is no such thing, read that as "install".  But otherwise its as
stated, installing won't touch your local config, just go ahead and
install it.

If you want a version newer than the distro has, you need to build it
yourself, see the HACKING file, and also since the processes and tools
are standard for open source C software, there should be help on the
web for details.  Since distros vary slightly you may need to find
where your distro put the old Geany to set the prefix.  Or you may
decide to put it somewhere totally different, just don't forget to set
your PATH.

Installing _will_ overwrite the system config files which are the
defaults.  As I said, if you have modified system files then you have
done a "bad thing" (TM) because they will get overwritten by the next
install, so I hope nobody has done that.  Just in case somebody has,
you need to copy the changed settings into a local config first or
they will be overwritten, how and what files depends on what you
changed.

>
> I'd be interested in the answer to this question myself.  The reply from Lex didn't really answer that question, IMHO.

As I said, its standard processes and tools for building open source
software and the HACKING file provides more information.

Cheers
Lex

>
> - Woody
>
> On Sun, Nov 8, 2020 at 7:21 PM Lex Trotman <elextr@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Hi Mike,
>>
>> On Mon, 9 Nov 2020 at 10:45, Mike McCauley <mlmccauley50@gmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >
>> > Under Ubuntu Linux, what is the recommended technique to upgrade Geany
>> > as newer versions are released?
>> >
>> > All I've been able to find online is info on how to do an initial
>> > install, and some upgrade suggestions that didn't work.
>>
>> Thats because there is no such thing as an "upgrade" of Geany, a new
>> install replaces the old install (unless specially built to not do
>> that, which (AFAIK) no distros do).
>>
>> >
>> > I've put a ton of time into customizing my install, and I for sure don't
>> > want to screw up and have an "upgrade trick" wipe all that out.
>>
>> An upgrade won't touch any customising you did in your local configure
>> directories, but if you are one of those people who customised the
>> system files then yes it will overwrite them.  In that case you need
>> to copy the changes to a non-system configuration first and don't
>> touch system files again.
>>
>> >
>> > I am only in interested in installing stable code, not bleeding edge
>> > development versions.
>>
>> Distro versions are usually releases so thats as stable as it gets.
>> That doesn't mean that there are no issues with a release, but by the
>> time it has percolated through most distro systems it should be fairly
>> stable so long as its the latest micro point release for the platform
>> (1.37.0 for Linux, 1.37.1 for Windows as this is written).
>>
>> If you want to upgrade bypassing the distro system, you can build
>> yourself with a different prefix so it doesn't overwrite an existing
>> version, thats how developers maintain multiple versions.
>>
>> Cheers
>> Lex
>>
>> >
>> > Thanks in advance!
>> >
>> > Mike
>> >
>> > REF: Ubuntu 20.04, Geany 1.36
>> >
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