Thanks jlu
Although there was a small typo in your post which I've highlighted above. I also discovered that it's possible to get all dependencies simultaneously:
Unfortunately having made and installed all of the Carman deb files it wouldn't work in the Xephyr window which just froze showing the Carman start up/logo screen . Not all is lost though; I made the ARMEL deb files and copied then to my N900 and they worked I haven't done much yet but I have changed the speedo gauge so that the metric and imperial versions are more or less matched (160mph / 260kmh) and added options to the 'configure units' to independently choose units for speed, temperature and pressure. But don't get too excited just yet, adding tick boxes to a menu is easy, but the way that 'units' are either metric or imperial is taking a bit of time to unravel.

I think Visual Studio would make things a little easier when it comes to navigating around Carman's program structure but Microsoft don't have a version for Kubuntu There are lots of things in KPackageKit and whilst I like the numerous word plays I'm on unfamiliar ground and any suggestions on what I could use instead VS gratefully received

A couple of other things to do are change the default carmand.conf file to specify internal gps for our N900s and turn of gps as part of the exit procedure. Then I'll need to find out who owns Carman so that I can send them what I've done to see if they want to make use of any of it .

Happy New Year everyone,
Sophie x