Re: A couple of technical questions

[Stephan André Schmidt <stephanandre schmidt uni-bielefeld de>]

Am 2001.05.08 01:38 schrieb(en) Brooklyn Linux Solutions CEO:
> Greeting:
> 
> Excuse me for sounding a little terse.  I'm very fustrated with trying,
> over
> many months, to compile Balsa.  I can get the binary RPM's to work
> without
> ispell pupport, but I've seen this function better.
> 
> 
> It's just bang bang bang - one thing after the next.  This package, like
> many
> gnome packages of late, just completely is in source code Chaos.
> 

Yes, in fact it can be difficult to compile developer packages ;-)

> 
> Even the 
> ./configure --enable-gtkhtml --with-gnome
> fails.  
> =============== Final configuration ===================
>     Installing into prefix: /usr/local
>       Using multithreading: yes
>  Using incomplete features: no
> Installing some files into  
>             Gnome's prefix: yes (may require root privileges)
>    Enable compile warnings: yes
>                Use GtkHTML: no
>                   Use LDAP: no
>                    Use GSS: no
>                    Use SSL: no
>           Printing support: no (gnome-print >= 0.25 required)
> 
> 

Your way invoking 'configure' does not make much sense. If you want to have
gtkhtml support for balsa, you have to specify also the option
'--enable-all'. But then you must install gtkhtml and probably a few other
packages. (like bonobo, oaf, etc. I can mail you a description if you are
interested in.) Try './configure --help' in the balsa source directory to
see the options. Then you can also see that the '--with-gnome' option
requires the gnome directory given, i.e. --with-gnome=/usr/local or
/usr/gnome. Normally it is sufficient to specify the prefix. For Red Hat it
is '--prefix=/usr'.

> And the compile itself fails....
> Making all in intl
> make[2]: Entering directory `/home/ruben/balsa-1.1.4/intl'
> gcc -c -DLOCALEDIR=\"/usr/local/share/locale\"
> -DGNULOCALEDIR=\"/usr/local/share/locale\"
> -DLOCALE_ALIAS_PATH=\"/usr/local/share/locale:.\" -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I..
> -I.
> -I../intl -I../lib -I/usr/lib/glib/include -I/usr/X11R6/include -g -O2
> -I/usr/lib/glib/include -D_REENTRANT         -Wall -Wno-uninitialized    
>  
>   -Wchar-subscripts -Wmissing-declarations -Wmissing-prototypes        
> -Wnested-externs -Wpointer-arith         -Wno-sign-compare -Wsign-promo  
>  
>     -Werror  dcgettext.c
> cc1: warnings being treated as errors
> dcgettext.c: In function `dcgettext__':
> dcgettext.c:300: warning: implicit declaration of function `stpcpy'
> make[2]: *** [dcgettext.o] Error 1
> make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/ruben/balsa-1.1.4/intl'
> make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
> make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/ruben/balsa-1.1.4'
> make: *** [all-recursive-am] Error 2
> 

Maybe this is a gettext problem. In general, balsa is very sensitive to
compilation warnings. Try the option '--disable-more-warnings'  (or
'--enable-more-warnings=no'). Then try to compile it again.

> 
> 
> This is a stock Suse 7.1 distro.  It fails to work in Slackware or RH 6.4
> either.
> I've had very good student programmers also not able to get this to work.
> 
> You need a straight foward installation instruction with working links to
> every library needed straight down, as if gnome itself is not installed.

You should invoke './configure --help' within the balsa source tree. You
should _really_ read the README in the balsa source tree.
> 
> 
> and the autoconf needs to be fixed....
> 
> 
> Ruben
> 


Stephan