meld installation issue

Question

I am trying to install the meld diff viewer on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. When I run

sudo apt-get install meld

I get the following output:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
  libgtksourceview2.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-common python-glade2 python-gnome2 python-gtksourceview2
  python-pyorbit
Suggested packages:
  python-gtk2-doc python-gnome2-doc libgtksourceview2.0-dev python-pyorbit-dbg
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  libgtksourceview2.0-0 libgtksourceview2.0-common meld python-glade2 python-gnome2
  python-gtksourceview2 python-pyorbit
0 upgraded, 7 newly installed, 0 to remove and 57 not upgraded.
Need to get 0 B/1,048 kB of archives.
After this operation, 5,255 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? Y
Selecting previously unselected package libgtksourceview2.0-common.
(Reading database ... 60%dpkg: unrecoverable fatal error, aborting:
reading files list for package 'python-aptdaemon.gtk3widgets': Input/output error
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (2)

Is there something wrong with the package libgtksourceview2.0-common? Is there a way to get a better update, or another way to get meld installed? I am uncertain how to proceed...

Solution

I just tried installing Meld on my 12.04 installation, using sudo apt-get install meld, and it worked with no problems.

Try this. Just press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open Terminal. When it opens, run the command(s) below:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install meld

If that dosen't work, try installing the latest python

sudo apt-get install python3

Comments

[Radu Rădeanu]

Did you tried with aptitude: sudo aptitude install meld?

[txmystic]

Your command syntax is unfamiliar to me. Normally when using the advanced package tool it is "apt-get". Can you elaborate?

[grimpitch]

Try sudo apt-get install --reinstall python-aptdaemon.gtk3widgets

[txmystic]

reinstallation of the package gives the same error again.

[Radu Rădeanu]

Possible duplicate: Unable to install any updates through update manager/apt-get upgrade

[Dan Dascalescu]

Note that the Meld package in the Ubuntu repos is about 2 years behind the current version.

[txmystic]

Thanks. I should have mentioned I had already run update. I re-ran update but still the same error as described above.

[txmystic]

I read the other post. My take is that although aptitude has some advantages, it did not seem to be a universal preference. Regardless, the upgrade itself failed with the same error (see comment in Mitch's answer)

[txmystic]

The upgrade failed with the same error (at 60% dpkg: unrecoverable fatal error). And I do not want to install python3 yet, I'm doing a project that requires 2.7 and I already have a side installation of 3.3.1. Is there any way to exploit that?

[Dan Dascalescu]

Note that the Meld package in the Ubuntu repos is about 2 years behind the current version.

[Dan Dascalescu]

You may not want to "just use sudo aptitude install meld. The Meld package in the Ubuntu repos is about 2 years behind the current version.

[Dan Dascalescu]

2017 update: note that the Meld package in the Ubuntu 16 (Xenial) repos is about 2 years behind the current version.