Re: comment on Gnome installation/compiling/debugging

[jlh geodesic com]

Andy Tai wrote:

> Hi, I find the following comment in slashdot by an AC. But I think it has good
> points, so repost it here:
>
> ----
> There is a slight issue here.
> by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 04, @03:09AM
>
> For one, the developers and debuggers of gnome have all been compiling
> and making the latest gnome packages from cvs. In order for this to work,
> they have their systems tuned perfectly. ie. All the right packages are
> installed, dependency problems are already corrected, etc, etc. They read
> the mailing lists and understand what changes suddenly may appear or
> what may break. The developers are living on a different plane than the
> average user, it's inevitable.
>
> The problem is the average user is not doing all that. For example,
> to compile the latest gnome packages libtool-1.2d is needed. Now I
> just checked a bunch of faq's on gnome, and no where is that mentioned.
> There is also a version of make or autoconf that is required that is in
> the gnu alpha ftp site, No where is that mentioned in the faq's.
>
> These library problems are going to cause major headaches for the
> developers because 10,000 newbies are gonna be asking "HOW DO I INSTALL
> GNOME???"
>
> They could have saved themselves the trouble of all this and
> prepared better documentation, unfortunately some of these faq's are
> getting out of date :(
>

Thanks for pointing that out.  I've been having serious trouble compiling
gnome from tarballs every since the 99.8 releases, and it has to be some
subtle configuration problem.  But as you point out, there is almost no
documentation regarding prerequisite tools and dependencies and so on.

It looks like this forum may help, and I'd like to post a typical problem and
see if anyone can help.  From the tarballs, I build gtk/gdk 1.2.0 and
imlib 1.9.4 and glib 1.2.0 and run ldconfig and so on.  However, when I
try to build gnome-libs 1.0.1 (and any gnome-libs since 99.8) I get the
following output:

...

ranlib .libs/libgnomeui.a
creating libgnomeui.la
(cd .libs && rm -f libgnomeui.la && ln -s ../libgnomeui.la libgnomeui.la)
gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I.. -I.. -I./.. -DNEED_GNOMESUPPORT_H -I../support
-I../support    -I../intl -I../intl     -I/usr/local/include -I/usr/X11R6/inclu          e
-I/usr/local/lib/glib/include -I/usr/local/include -I/usr/local/include -I/us
/X11R6/include         -DGNOMELIBDIR=\""/usr/local/lib"\"         -DGNOMEDATADI
=\""/usr/local/share"\"         -DGNOMEBINDIR=\""/usr/local/bin"\"         -DGN
MELOCALSTATEDIR=\""/usr/local/var"\"         -DGNOMELOCALEDIR=\""/usr/local/sha
e/locale"\"     -DG_LOG_DOMAIN=\"GnomeUI\"  -I/usr/X11R6/include -I/usr/local/l
b/glib/include -I/usr/local/include  -O2 -Wall -Wno-unused  -c gnome_segv.c
/bin/sh ../libtool --mode=link gcc  -O2 -Wall -Wno-unused   -o gnome_segv  gnom
_segv.o libgnomeui.la                                           ../libgnome/lib
nome.la                         ../libart_lgpl/libart_lgpl.la           ../supp
rt/libgnomesupport.la -L/usr/lib -lesd -laudiofile -lm -L/usr/lib -laudiofile -          m
-ldb -L/usr/local/lib -lglib -ldl -L/usr/local/lib -lgdk_imlib -L/usr/local/l          b
-L/usr/X11R6/lib -lgtk -lgdk -rdynamic -lgmodule -lglib -ldl -lXext -lX11 -lm
-lSM -lICE -L/usr/local/lib -L/usr/X11R6/lib -lgtk -lgdk -rdynamic -lgmodule -l
lib -ldl -lXext -lX11 -lm        -lz -lm
gcc -O2 -Wall -Wno-unused -o .libs/gnome_segv gnome_segv.o -Wl,--rpath -Wl,/usr
local/lib .libs/libgnomeui.so -L/usr/lib -lesd -laudiofile -lm -L/usr/lib -laud
ofile -lm -ldb -L/usr/local/lib -lglib -ldl -L/usr/local/lib -lgdk_imlib -L/usr
local/lib -L/usr/X11R6/lib -lgtk -lgdk -lgmodule -lglib -ldl -lXext -lX11 -lm -
SM -lICE -L/usr/local/lib -L/usr/X11R6/lib -lgtk -lgdk -lgmodule -lglib -ldl -l
ext -lX11 -lm -lz -lm -Wl,--rpath -Wl,/usr/local/lib ../libgnome/.libs/libgnome
so -L/usr/local/lib -lglib -lm -ldl -lz -lm -Wl,--rpath -Wl,/usr/local/lib ../l
bart_lgpl/.libs/libart_lgpl.so -Wl,--rpath -Wl,/usr/local/lib ../support/.libs/
ibgnomesupport.so -lz -lm -L/usr/lib -lesd -laudiofile -lm -L/usr/lib -laudiofi          e
-lm -ldb -L/usr/local/lib -lglib -ldl -L/usr/local/lib -lgdk_imlib -L/usr/loc
l/lib -L/usr/X11R6/lib -lgtk -lgdk -rdynamic -lgmodule -lglib -ldl -lXext -lX11
-lm -lSM -lICE -L/usr/local/lib -L/usr/X11R6/lib -lgtk -lgdk -rdynamic -lgmodul
-lglib -ldl -lXext -lX11 -lm -lz -lm
.libs/libgnomeui.so: undefined reference to `DGifGetExtensionNext'
.libs/libgnomeui.so: undefined reference to `jpeg_read_scanlines'
.libs/libgnomeui.so: undefined reference to `DGifGetRecordType'
.libs/libgnomeui.so: undefined reference to `DGifGetImageDesc'
.libs/libgnomeui.so: undefined reference to `png_set_strip_16'
.libs/libgnomeui.so: undefined reference to `png_set_filler'
.libs/libgnomeui.so: undefined reference to `png_create_read_struct'
.libs/libgnomeui.so: undefined reference to `DGifOpenFileHandle'
.libs/libgnomeui.so: undefined reference to `gdk_imlib_load_alpha'
.libs/libgnomeui.so: undefined reference to `TIFFReadRGBAImage'
.libs/libgnomeui.so: undefined reference to `png_set_read_fn'
...
.libs/libgnomeui.so: undefined reference to `png_init_io'
make[3]: *** [gnome_segv] Error 1
make[3]: Leaving directory `/home/jlh/gnome/tarballs/gnome-libs-1.0.1/libgnomeu          '

make[2]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/jlh/gnome/tarballs/gnome-libs-1.0.1/libgnomeu          '

make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/jlh/gnome/tarballs/gnome-libs-1.0.1'
make: *** [all-recursive-am] Error 2
>

Most of the undefined references result from missing '-lpng -ltiff -lungif -ljpeg',
which can be inserted by hand into the makefile, but that still leaves
'undefined reference to `gdk_imlib_load_alpha'.

Note that png, tiff, ungif and jpeg were all compiled from the tarballs of the
latest release, and live in /usr/local/lib where they should be found.  I'm
using libtool-1.2d and, as near as I can tell, the latest releases of the usual
suspects.

I would appreciate if anyone could help out; I'd like gnome-libs to configure
and build automatically.

Thanks,

John