Upgrade to Banshee 0.11.0 on SLED10

DO NOT FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS. THEY ARE NOW OUTDATED.
This post co-written with Erin Quill, and follows my presentation at Ohio Linux Fest. Thanks go out to everyone who came to my session. (Update: See 16OCT06, below.)

A few weeks before releasing iTunes 7, Apple rolled out a firmware update for iPod devices. The update rendered obsolete a key library for using Banshee with your iPod. (This is normally the point at which I would open up into a small-time rant about Apple, but I understand that the Mighty Aaron Bockover has one queued up for a near-term release.) So here is where we will step in and try to make ourselves useful by explaining how to update a SLED10 system (and probably an openSUSE system, as well) to the latest version of Banshee.

Updating to the latest Banshee does more than simply fix connectivity with any iPod devices that you might have mistakenly updated. It will also get you new plugins, including the aforementioned podcast plugin. (This is where the Amarok/KDE users chuckle about my foolish fascination with Banshee/Mono/GNOME. Fairly, I suppose. Amarok has had a podcatcher for quite some time.)

16OCT06 Update: You can now get RPM’s for the latest version of Banshee. (Even better, this will soon be a YUM repository.) Therefore, do the procedure that follows only if you really, really want to build from source.

[The first couple comments came in on this post, reminded me that I should add some important information. First is that this process manually adds Banshee instead of waiting for Novell to post a fix in the update service, which means that it effectively breaks SLED10 from having officially supported packages. If you intend to use Novell support, don't do this on your production machines. The second is that the community-oriented openSUSE distribution updates faster than the enterprise SLED10 does. openSUSE 10.2 may include an even newer build of Banshee than this one. And the last note is that Aaron Bockover just recently moved Banshee into the SUSE AutoBuild process, which will make it easier to crank out the update as packages in the future.]

Finally. before I get into my version, the Mighty Aaron Bockover put his procedure on the Banshee wiki, but it looks like his instructions paint with very broad strokes. I wanted to get a little more specific. If they are more helpful, then I’ll move them into the wiki. So, here are the setup instructions, as best I could get them in a first draft.

1. Remove Your Current Banshee Packages
Two versions of Banshee will conflict, and building from source will not remove your system’s current version. Use YaST to remove the following packages:

• banshee
• banshee-engine-gst
• banshee-engine-helix
• helix-dbus-server
• banshee-plugins-default
• libipoddevice
• ipod-sharp (if installed)

A fast method for removing these in YaST is to open the Software Management tool, and then search first for “banshee” to get the banshee packages, then search for “ipod” to remove the two iPod-related packages. [Click the image to the right to embiggen.]

There should be no dependent package conflicts. Proceed with informed caution if YaST presents any to you.

2. Add Required Packages from the Install Media
In SLED10, you will need to add the following packages in order to complete the update. Most of these required packages are related to building Banshee, not actually running it. So, add these packages. [Click image at right to embiggen.]

• gcc
• gcc-c++
• pkgconfig
• gob2
• dbus-1-devel
• libgtop-devel
• hal-devel
• libxml2-devel
• gstreamer010
• gstreamer010-devel
• gstreamer010-plugins-base-devel
• mono-devel
• monodoc-core
• sqlite-devel
• libmusicbrainz-devel
• libgnome-devel
• libgnomeui-devel
• gconf2-devel
• gnome-vfs2-devel
• gnome-desktop-devel
• gtk2-devel
• nautilus-cd-burner-devel

YaST may present to you a host of other packages it needs to add because of dependencies. Take YaST’s advice and install them, too.

3. Download the Banshee 0.11.0 Sources
With all the prerequisite packages in place, you can now download, build and install the Banshee 11 sources. We recommend downloading all the sources into a single folder to make your post-update cleanup a lot easier.

Retrieve the sources from this page on the Banshee wiki. You will need all of them, possibly excepting njb-sharp, which is for NJB devices (Creative Nomad, Zen, Zen Micro, Dell DJ, and more).

Here are the direct links as of today:

• Banshee
• Banshee Official plugins
• ipod-sharp
• libipoddevice
• njb-sharp
• helix-dbus-server
• Xing MP3 Encoder

4. Extract and Build the Sources
First, let’s lay out the order in which you will build each source package. Then we’ll walk you through building the first package.

Sequence:

Install the packages in this order

1. libipoddevice-0.5.0
2. ipod-sharp-0.6.2
3. njb-sharp-0.3.0 (again, this is optional…I have not done it)
4. helix-dbus-server-0.2.3
5. gstreamer-xing
6. banshee-0.11.0
7. banshee-official-plugins-0.11.0

Build process:

1. Untar the first package: libipoddevice-0.5.0.tar.gz
   This is easiest by simply browsing to the folder in nautilus or konquerer, and then right clicking the gstreamer-xing package and choosing “Extract here.”
2. Open a Terminal window in the newly-extracted libipoddevice-0.5.0 folder
   Again, in nautilus this is easiest by right-clicking the libipoddevice-0.5.0 folder, and then choosing “Open in Terminal”
   
3. Configure for building
   At the bash prompt, type ./configure –prefix=/usr and then hit enter. That’s a double-dash before “prefix,” just messed up by WordPress. Do not do this as root.
   The –prefix=/usr‘ part is where a lot of people might mess up. It’s required on SUSE-based platforms. Again, it has a double-dash before the word “prefix.”
   When process stops, check for errors, The most common error will be that you need to add another a package through YaST.
   Most successful configure processes provide some reassuring text in the last few lines. [Click image at right to embiggen.]
4. Build from source with make
   At the bash prompt, type make and then hit enter. Do not do this as root.
   The make command builds binary files from source
5. Install the newly-built binaries into your system
   At the bash prompt, type sudo make install and then hit enter. Do not do this as roo
   The sudo command will ask for your root password so that it can perform the ‘make install’ as root.
6. Confirm that the system recognizes the newly-installed binaries
   Use pkg-config –modversion ipoddevice to confirm that the version of the package installed on the system matches the version you tried to install. (For ipoddevice, you should get 0.5.0)
   The other package names to use for this test are: ipoddevice, ipod-sharp, helix-dbus-server, banshee, and banshee-official-plugins
   You can confirm gstreamer-xing with $ gst‑inspect xingenc
   I don’t know how to confirm the install of banshee-official-plugins.
7. If you get the package installed, move on to the next in the list, and start with step 1 again.

5. Excercise Banshee Features
There are some basic tests that will help you to confirm a complete install. Discovering later that, say, ripping a CD doesn’t work because of encoding issues might be inconvenient:

• Play a song
• Rip a song
• Hook up your iPod
  • Move a song to your library from iPod
  • Move a single song from your library to iPod
• Enable Podcatcher
  • Here is a really good feed that you can test out: http://www.novell.com/company/podcasts/openaudio_mp3.xml

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