Latest version of OpenMSX in Linux Mint

"Change distro, or build from source"... ugh - there's more ways to Rome.

In this case, one option is to manually install .deb packages as needed. Taking my own Debian Linux (testing) install as example:

/etc/apt/sources.list includes http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/ as one of the places where packages are searched. Simply copying that URL into a browser, I find openMSX packages here: http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/main/o/openmsx/

You see packages for version 0.8.2, 0.10.1 and 0.12.0 for various architectures. @ This point, best is to remove the older openMSX (and perhaps directly related packages too) from the system. Then:

1) Download the newer .deb package for your architecture. In my case: openmsx_0.12.0-1+b1_amd64.deb
2) As root, change to download directory. Followed by

dpkg -i openmsx_0.12.0-1+b1_amd64.deb

(or do "sudo" followed by above command).
3) If successful, you're done. But just taking the package itself & ignoring dependencies, chances are this will fail (see dpkg output for details). If so:
4) If necessary, remove partially installed package. Then take one of the dependencies that was missing, and install that. Preferably a distro-provided version (easier & safer), if not available a newer version that's obtained / installed using this same procedure.

Repeat (recursively), and most likely one of 2 things will happen:
1) Success. All dependencies installed either from distro or manually located .deb's. And with those in place, newer openMSX installed successfully using dpkg.
2) Somehow you can't get all dependencies in place because one or more of them can't co-operate with other packages on your system. Oh wait... that is probably the reason newer openMSX wasn't in your distro's repository in the first place. :P

So quite a bit of manual work & success not guaranteed. But still easier than "upgrade distro". And if it works, also easier to manage than "compile from source". The latter often isn't as difficult as users may assume, but going that route you lack package management comforts like checking what's installed (or easy removal of all files belonging to a package).

Agree completely! But that's not what you'd be doing here. If you start browsing in a repository found in /etc/apt/sources.list, you're not finding 'random debs' but .deb's from your very own distro. Just newer versions among those - which are destined to migrate into your system anyway (over time). That's something very different than grabbing .deb's from other distro's at random.

In the case of Linux Mint, most of those packages will come from Ubuntu repositories. And the packages you'd be upgrading to newer versions (openmsx*) would be just the application packages. Lower-level dependencies are already installed, or can be installed using the regular package tools like Synaptic, so (rare exceptions aside) you're not installing incompatible system libraries that 1001 other packages rely on. Buttt....

Also agree on that one. In my experience: if you manage to compile from source, it usually gives you a binary that's least likely to segfault or similar. As opposed to installing from binary packages that may or may not be built against different library versions etc.

The advantage of .deb method is that once installed, if a newer version becomes available package will be upgraded automatically as part of regular system updates. Whereas for a package installed from source, upgrading is manual work.

There's pro's and cons to each. But in general: the less manual work, the better.

Thank you all for the responses. Sorry for not posting anything before, I was out for holidays. After reading gdx post, I will think about moving away from mint, but before I decide, I will try to build the latest version of openMSX and tell you the results.

Getting the dependencies is very easy, just do:
sudo apt-get build-dep openmsx

sudo apt-get build-dep openmsx-catapult

Doing a make install installs it in the default location /opt/openMSX etc. Did you do make install at all?

The build-dep doesn't pull in openMSX code, only installs all packages of its build-dependencies. It may not be 100% right, but you'll have most of them (if not all). See also http://openmsx.org/manual/compile.html#libs under Debian and Ubuntu (also true for Mint, it's also Debian based).

Which wxWidgets did you use and are you using now? It should work fine with 3.0.