Detecting shared library problems

[Robert Graham Merkel]

Ben Stanley writes:
 > 
 > The bane of a GNUCash user's life seems to be getting all the shared
 > libraries installed - and learning what a shared library is etc. One
 > would hope that rpm and other packaging systems would look after this
 > for us, but a recent posting to the gnucash-users list would seem to
 > indicate that this is a continuing problem.

You might notice that we never hear of problems from Debian users
trying to install the Debian packages.  That's because Debian *does*
have this problem solved.  Debian dependancies are package rather than
file-based, and the Debian package management front-ends automatically
pull in required packages.

However, seeing the world isn't going to stop using RPM-based systems
with inadequate package management tools overnight, anything to reduce
the hassles they face and we regularly deal with would be good.

 > I have a suggestion to remedy this problem. The error must be able to be
 > trapped somehow. When the error occurs, if we could print out a message
 > pointing to a local file and perhaps a URL (with identical contents)
 > which explains the problem and what to do about it, and has links to
 > pages with explanations particular to each OS / packaging system.
 > Perhaps these explanations already exist in the form of a HOWTO
 > somewhere? Or perhaps Robert Merkel's recent post "Problem after
 > installation" could be used as a starting point.
 > 

Why not simply modify the dynamic linker to print more helpful error
messages?  That would be relatively simple and would be a substantial
improvement.  Each distribution could have their own error message.

 > I have recently found that I am able to type a library file name into
 > http://www.rpmfind.net, and it will give me a list of packages which
 > provide it. I just have to find the one for my OS, and hope that it's on
 > my CDs so I don't have to download it :-). Unfortunately it doesn't
 > solve the problem of long dependency chains, but I have been able to
 > find out that library X is supplied by package Y without having to have
 > magical knowledge...
 > 

I'm not trying to start a distro flamewar (all of the disributions
have their good points), but you might want to have a look at Debian.
You'll never have to worry about a dependancy chain again :)

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Robert Merkel	                           rgmerk@mira.net

<telsa> I left my client on #gtk+ overnight and there was nothing 
in scrollback at all except quit/rejoins.
<bighead> telsa: well its been that for, I think 3 days now 
(ever since started coming back on IRC)
<telsa> Clearly they are busy implementing telepathy, 
and dog-fooding it. :) 
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