I would like to try Amarok 2.4.1, but it is available for kubuntu 11.04 only. I am on kubuntu 10.10 and do not want to upgrade at the moment. However, I would like to update my Amarok 2.4.0. So I guess using the source tarball is my only option?

I have some questions about upgrading from source. My current version is installed from repositories, so will I be able to upgrade or do I have to remove the current version first? I also would like to preserve all my current settings, of course.

So how does the upgrade from source process go in general?

You'll need to remove the version from repositories first:
sudo apt-get remove amarok amarok-common amarok-utils

This won't remove your settings etc (though if you wish to be sure, you can back up ~/.kde/share/apps/amarok and ~/.kde/share/config/amarok*).

Then install the build dependencies (mostly -dev packages) using:
sudo apt-get build-dep amarok

Unpack the tarball, cd into the build dir inside it, and run:
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=`kde4-config --prefix` ..
make && sudo make install


That should be it. CMake may report some missing packages; if you use the features listed you'll have to find the dependencies manually, since build-dep didn't get them, and re-run cmake before running make.

Thank you, I will try it in the nearest future.

An alternative to installing from the tarball, would be installing from GIT. It isn't any more difficult, and will enable you to stay completely up-to-date, and help us test. For a step by step tutorial on how to do this, see Myriam's excellent blog:'

http://blogs.fsfe.org/myriam/2009/09/co ... l-summary/

Valorie

Valorie, I do not feel that nightly builds are stable enough for everyday use. Also installing from a tarball is complicated enough for me. Thanks for the suggestion anyway.

Sentynel, your solution worked quite well (I have the new version and it plays songs =). THANK YOU.
Few remarks for those who want to repeat this process and never have done this before.

sudo apt-get build-dep amarok - is a critical step and the official compilation guide does not mention it. However, it installed almost 150 MB of packages additionally (including mysql server, for example).
Is there an easy way to remove those packages after building besides removing one by one using the list that apt showed (I lost the list anyway)?

make command takes ages, I suppose there are ways to speed it up, but for one time build and a simple user like me - that's not an option and I did not like waiting so long.
uninstall is quite problematic now, as I understand?

Anyway, I hope I will never have to use that method again, packages is the way to go for average folk like me. .deb would be nice, if ppa is not provided for older ubuntu versions.
But I have what I wanted, and that's good.

uninstall - running "make uninstall" should work assuming you keep your source directory intact

if you have a multi-core processor you man use the "-j" option to compile using the additional cores "make -j2" or "make install -j2", see make man page for addition info

you should contact the Kubuntu packager(s) about providing current versions of Amarok in backports

evll wrote:sudo apt-get build-dep amarok - is a critical step and the official compilation guide does not mention it. However, it installed almost 150 MB of packages additionally (including mysql server, for example).
Is there an easy way to remove those packages after building besides removing one by one using the list that apt showed (I lost the list anyway)?

make command takes ages, I suppose there are ways to speed it up, but for one time build and a simple user like me - that's not an option and I did not like waiting so long.
uninstall is quite problematic now, as I understand?

apt-get build-dep is a shortcut on apt-managed distros which uses the package manager to determine what packages are required for building. Such packages can be located and installed manually or with other package managers on other distros, hence not being listed.

You can check the listed build dependencies with `apt-cache showsrc amarok`. This will print off the source package record(s) for Amarok, including the "Build-Depends" lines, which you can use for removal. Note, however, that you may have installed some packages listed as build dependencies for other reasons, so indiscriminately uninstalling them all may not be wise.

google01103 has answered your other questions, though I will just add that you can always redownload the source if you need to uninstall. Also, simply reinstalling from the package manager (and uninstalling again, if you wish to totally remove it) *should* overwrite all the manually installed files, but it isn't necessarily guaranteed that they're the same as the distro may make changes.