PSPP GNU/Linux packaging

PSPP is a software package for statistics. This site provides information regarding the GNU/Linux package update. Information about MacOS bundles is here: PSPP MacOS Bundles.

Building from Source

You can build and install pspp on most Unix like systems from source. Instructions how to do this can be found here: http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/pspp.git/plain/INSTALL. This is the fundamental way to install software but you have to take care for installing all required libraries and you cannot easily uninstall the software. Therefore I recommend to build a new distribution package instead.

Updating the pspp package in GNU/Linux distributions

GNU/Linux distributions like Debian make a release by taking the pspp package version which is in the rolling testing (sid) stage at the time of freezing the GNU/Linux release. The pspp version which is the default version for a specific GNU/Linux distribution release are listed here:

Debian: https://packages.debian.org/pspp
Ubuntu: https://packages.ubuntu.com/pspp

Debian stretch for example contains pspp 0.10.2. There are a number of possibilities to update the pspp version inside a GNU/Linux distribution.

Backports

Sometimes a backport of a newer pspp version is available for an older distribution. Instructions how to install backports can be found here https://backports.debian.org/Instructions for Debian. This is the easiest way to have an updated version.

Ubuntu PPA

For Ubuntu Adam Zammit maintains a PPA with several updates of pspp. Installation via a PPA is similar to a backports install. See: https://launchpad.net/~adamzammit/+archive/ubuntu/pspp

Building an updated pspp package

If you wish to use a newer pspp version than the one provided with the GNU/Linux distribution or possibly a backport, then there is a good chance that you can generate a new updated pspp package for your GNU/Linux distribution release from the package source of a later GNU/Linux distribution release. The latest pspp package for Debian is in sid (unstable). It is not advisable to take a binary package from a later distribution because the interface to the required libraries may have changed. Therefore you take the package source instead of the package binary and then compile a new pspp package for your GNU/Linux distribution.

Assume you want to create a new pspp package for Debian jessie. Jessie has pspp version 0.8.4 as the default version. Assume that Debian unstable contains the pspp version 1.0.1. Add the line


deb-src http://ftp.debian.org/debian unstable main

to the file /etc/apt/sources.conf. This will make the package sources of the packages in unstable available for apt-get.

Then download the pspp package sources from the unstable distribution.


mkdir tmp
cd tmp
sudo apt-get update
apt-get source pspp/unstable

After this step you will have the files


pspp_1.0.1-1.dsc
pspp_1.0.1-1.debian.tar.xz
pspp_1.0.1.orig.tar.gz

and the directory


pspp-1.0.1

in your directory. Now you can install the package dependencies with


sudo apt-get build-dep pspp/unstable

And then you can build and test your pspp package with


cd pspp-1.0.1
debuild -us -uc
cd ..

After this step you have the binary pspp package


pspp_1.0.1-1_amd64.deb

in your directory and you can install the package with


sudo dpkg -i pspp_1.0.1-1_amd64.deb

You can uninstall the package as usual with


sudo apt-get remove pspp

This procedure is preferable vs. the plain installation from source because the package and all data can be uninstalled the usual way and the prerequisites can be installed the usual way via apt-get.

Maintained by Friedrich Beckmann

Last modified: Sat Sep 16 11:59:03 CEST 2017