Begs, for easier source install over binary RPMS.

[Michael Meeks <michael imaginator com>]

Hi,

On Sat, 24 Oct 1998 tack@dok.org wrote:
> > about and had no idea how to fix. Well I decided to completely
> > re-install linux. After re-installing Red Hat 5.1(with no gnome stuff) I
                                                     ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> The moral of your story: not only must you have the latest libraries, but you
> must have the latest versions of the developers' tools, especially automake,
> autoconf, and libtool.  That's really all reinstalling the OS did for you was
> update these things.

	I assumed that a binary install of gnome ( eg. the one that came
with RedHat 5.1 ) was done initialy, and that it was this that cocked up
compilation due to confusion about which files to use. I find it difficult
to believe that _re-installing_ Redhat 5.1 would _update_ any of the
tools?

	I imagine that the core developers that have always worked from
source havn't come up against the kind of wierd errors you get from the
innumerable conflicts that occur. I invite any sceptic to get a clean
machine, install RedHat 5.1 ( with Gnome ), and then try and compile the
latest source following the 'Building GNOME From tar sources'

	http://www.gnome.org/start/gnometar.shtml

	BTW. I am sure this is completely correct from a clean (= no
previous binary GNOME install ) 5.0 / 5.1 config.

	Well, perhaps I am doing something completely stupid, but I urge
those that think this is a non-problem just to try ( and no cheating with
ACLOCAL_FLAGS / funny --prefixes etc. =).

> I hate to say it, but that really is a Windows mentality.  "If something's
> broken, reinstalling the OS is your magical solution."  At least Linux gives us
> the ability to figure out the problem and solve it, whereas with Windows maybe
> 2 or 3 people in the world actually know what's going on.

	Right, well if I get something like:

michael@mejm2 [19] ./autogen.sh                    ~/gnome/wholetree/imlib
I am going to run ./configure with no arguments - if you wish 
to pass any to it, please specify them on the ./autogen.sh command line.
You should add the contents of `/usr/local/share/aclocal/libtool.m4' to
`aclocal.m4'.
aclocal: configure.in: 7: macro `AM_CONFIG_HEADER' not found in library
aclocal: configure.in: 9: macro `AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE' not found in library
aclocal: configure.in: 14: macro `AM_MAINTAINER_MODE' not found in library
automake: configure.in: installing `./install-sh'
automake: configure.in: installing `./mkinstalldirs'
automake: configure.in: installing `./missing'
utils/Makefile.am:90: variable `GTK_LIBS' not defined
utils/Makefile.am:90: variable `GTK_LIBS' not defined
automake: Makefile.am: installing `./INSTALL'
creating cache ./config.cache
./configure: syntax error near unexpected token
`AM_CONFIG_HEADER(config.h)'
./configure: ./configure: line 529: `AM_CONFIG_HEADER(config.h)'

Now type 'make' to compile imlib.

[snip]
michael@mejm2 [22] autoconf --version         ~/gnome/wholetree/imlib
Autoconf version 2.12
[snip]
automake 3.1, libtool 1.0h, gcc 2..7.2.3 ....

	It doesn't inspire me to delve into the info file for autoconf
which has a 189 line frontpage, I did notice this though:

   The configuration scripts produced by Autoconf require no manual user
intervention when run; they do not normally even need an argument
specifying the system type.  Instead, they test for the presence of each
feature that the software package they are for might need individually.
(Before each check, they print a one-line message stating what they are
checking for, so the user doesn't get too bored while waiting for the
script to finish.)  As a result, they deal well with systems that are
hybrids or customized from the more common UNIX variants.  There is no
need to maintain files that list the features supported by each release
of each variant of UNIX.

	It seems that autoconf is designed to make configuration simple,
slick, parameterless and will create the correct configure file for your
system state ?

	What is my point ? well things are less easy than it may appear to
those that have, from the start, used source for everything. Please try
installing some binary RPMS right now... why not grab an old version of
GTK and force, allfiles install it ? then try and build imlib using
autoconf.

	Hmm,

		Michael.

PS. there should be something very simple that I am missing.
-- 
 michael@imaginator.com  <><, Pseudo Engineer, itinerant idiot