./configure information (was Re: Orca Installation problem)

[Willie Walker <William Walker Sun COM>]

Sorry for the frustrating experience, Mike.  :-(

Since you're on SUSE Linux with GNOME 2.12, you may have a fair  
amount of system configuration ahead of you: Orca works best with  
GNOME 2.14 and you need to bring your GNOME 2.12 bits up to date.   
I've only had experience with getting Orca going on Fedora Core 4,  
Ubuntu 5.10, and Solaris x86/SPARC.  As such, I'm not familiar with  
how things work on SUSE Linux.

If it is convenient for you to do so, you might consider migrating to  
Ubuntu's Dapper Drake release.  It has GNOME 2.14 in it and your set  
up should be much easier.  Fedora Core 5 also has GNOME 2.14, and it  
might be easy, too.

In any case, the ./QUICKSTART document in the orca package is an  
attempt to tell you how to get going, but it might be stale.  From a  
high level point of view, when building from source:

 ./configure is the utility that sets up the make files according to  
your system configuration

 You can get help by running "./configure --help"

 The "--prefix=/usr" option tells ./configure where things should be  
installed.  It typically defaults to /usr/local.  Per the previous  
messages, not all distributions have set up Python (the language Orca  
is written in) to look in /usr/local for packages, so we recommend -- 
prefix=/usr for now.

 Once you've run "./configure --prefix=/usr", you need to run "make"  
to build everything and then (as root) "make install" to install  
orca.  One of our action items is to do some adjusting of the orca  
source directories so you can run orca from the source directory,  
avoiding the need to do a "make install".

Hope this helps,

Will

On Mar 30, 2006, at 8:14 AM, Mike Wigle wrote:

> Okay, time for my newbieness to really shine. Where, exactly should  
> I be
> doing my compiling and how do I as you put it " have orca install  
> itself
>
> into /usr/local". I must admit that everything I've installed so far I
> have compiled under my downloads folder in under /home/mwigle/ and  
> done
> the configure, make and make install from there hoping that it will  
> work
> (which it frequently has to some extent or other). Where should I be
> extracting the software to build to and is that where the program
> actually installs too? I know this isn't what this forum is for really
> but I haven't found a good place to ask these questions yet. :P As a
> side note, I'm looking at doing another rebuild on my one linux test
> machine so when it comes time to reinstall al the add-on packages  
> again
> it would be nice for this and everything else to be done correctly.
> Thanks again.
>
> Michael Wigle
> Computer Access Specialist
> Cincinnati Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired
> 2045 Gilbert Ave
> Cincinnati, OH 45202
> Phone: 513-487-4243
> Fax: 513-221-2995
> E-mail: mike wigle cincyblind org
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Luke Yelavich [mailto:themuso themuso com]
> Sent: Wednesday, March 29, 2006 3:57 PM
> To: orca-list gnome org
> Subject: Re: Orca Installation problem
>
> On Thu, Mar 30, 2006 at 06:11:20AM EST, Mike Pedersen wrote:
> > Hello Michael,
> > > Orca 0.2.2 tar ball
> > > I didn't use any command options when I did the ./configure
> > > command because I've never used options with that command
> > > when compiling anything. I'm not sure what options to use or why.
> > This might be  your problem.  Your configure should look like
> ./configure
> > --prefix=/usr
>
> YOu really don't need to specify any options. I have orca install  
> itself
>
> into /usr/local, as /usr is package managed, and should I need to
> change/remove orca files, I would rather have it installed somewhere
> where it won't get trod on/get in the way of other files. It is also
> easier to remove by hand then if something were to happen with my  
> build
> source such that it couldn't remove anything.
> --
> Luke Yelavich
> GPG key: 0xD06320CE
>          (http://www.themuso.com/themuso-gpg-key.txt)
> Email & MSN: themuso themuso com
> ICQ: 18444344
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