Re: why is gtk install so difficult?

[Sven Neumann <sven gimp org>]

Hi,

Steve Grimaud <sgrimaud ispwest com> writes:

> I'm sorry, but the statement below by Reuben hits the nail on the
> head for the "user."

The "user" doesn't compile any packages. Perhaps the "user" installs a
binary package from time to time but actually she shouldn't even have
to bother with that.

> Sven's answer (also quoted below) assumes several things that just
> aren't likely to happen unless you're advanced in the use of Linux and
> in building and installing software packages.  I "read the docs" and
> followed the steps for pointing to what I believed were the right
> locations. I wonder why I should have to "understand how the compiler
> and linker work" in order to install a program.

You don't need to understand how they work but you should have
understood where the compiler and linker look for include files and
libraries. This involves understanding the basics of gcc and ld
command-line options (and on Linux it also involves a basic
understanding of ldconfig).

This is basic knowledge for building software. You can hardly get away
witout this knowledge and if you are not willing to learn this stuff,
you simply should not try to install software from source. Fortunately
the Linux user nowadays can happily live without having to know all
this since she will never have to compile from source.

> If it is easy enough to "understand from a hundred lines of text or
> so," where are those lines of code?

I pointed you to them in my mail.

> If Linux and these install and configuration packages are so
> powereful, the how in the world can a program not find files that I
> can find with a minimal comprehension of linux commands?

The point is that there can be multiple versions of these files on
your disk. It's very common practise to have multiple build
environments on the same system. The configure script can hardly guess
what build environment it is supposed to use. That's why you have to
setup your build environment by setting a handful of environment
variables before you run configure. Earlier in this thread people
pointed out scripts that ease this task.

People, are you actually realizing that building from source has
become so much easier since pkg-config was introduced? While earlier
each and every library installed their own foo-config file, there is
now a common database of installed packages that has all this
knowledge. All you need to do is to set a single environment variable
correctly.


Sven