I use a Debian Linux OS that uses Gnome for the desktop envirionment. I used to be able to install amarok from the release repository, but that support has been dropped (quite a while ago). Since then I have tried a few other media players, but in my opinion amarok is superior. The problem is that my Linux OS (Bunsenlabs), no longer includes amarok in the distribution.

I downloaded amarok-2.8.90.tar.xz earlier this year and today I finally got around to trying to install it. When I untarred the file, I went into the amarok-2.8.90 directory and looked at the README file. The file identifies dependencies:

DEPENDENCIES
==============

Required
* KDE-Libs 4.8.4 (or newer) + KDE-Base-runtime 4.8 (oxygen-icons) (or newer)
http://www.kde.org

* Phonon backend, one of the following is strongly recommended
* phonon-gstreamer 4.6.3 (or newer)
* phonon-vlc 0.6.1 (or newer; as of 0.6.1 doesn't yet play Audio CDs, bug 313046)

* Qt 4.8.3 (or newer)
http://qt-project.org

* TagLib 1.7 (or newer)
(Metadata tagging library)

* TagLib Extras 1.0.1 (or newer)
(Support for metadata reading of additional file types)
svn://anonsvn.kde.org/home/kde/trunk/kd ... lib-extras

* MySQL 5.0 (or newer) Embedded: libmysqld compiled with fPIC
(In-process database support)

* QtScript Generator, Qt Bindings 0.1.0
(Qt Bindings for QtScript for Amarok's scripting system)
http://code.google.com/p/qtscriptgenerator/

* LibQCA 2.0.2 (or newer)
(Qt Cryptographic Architecture)
http://delta.affinix.com/qca/

I am an experienced programmer, but not a GUI guy. I see that the amarok available runs on KDE, but can it run in a non-KDE environment like Gnome? In other words, if I download and install all the dependencies list above, can I run amarok?

It seems like it should be possible. A few generations back, I could run amarok on Bunsenlabs Debian because the release developers took the time to package a working version of amarok in their repository. If it is possible, is someone willing to work with me to build and install amarok on my current OS? If so, I will document that process and make documentation available at https://userbase.kde.org/Amarok, or another location if more appropriate. The limit I must set is that I will work to build a working version of Amarok by linking to appropriate libraries, but I will not modify any of the underlying source code.

BTW, most of the dependencies listed are not available on my current OS, so I would have to download and install most of the dependencies.

Regards,
Jim Anderson