Something is still broken with the build process

Nathan Neulinger nneul at umr.edu
Fri Apr 4 18:28:51 CST 2003


I agree... maybe he's doing something weird... I do installs with prefix
of /some/path/prodname/osname and then symlink everything to /usr/local/
or similar. In 99% of the cases, the product should not need to know
anything special about the symlinks. (Some are weird, like old configure
scripts and gcc --print-path which has issues with ../../ in the path
and improperly collapsing it without traversing first.)

In our case everything is installed into afs and every host has a /umr
path pointing to a common link tree in afs that has a hundred plus
products installed and thereby accessible to all systems. Home grown
equivalent of gnu stow, but long pre-existing before stow.

-- Nathan

On Fri, 2003-04-04 at 18:19, Derek Atkins wrote:
> Nathan Neulinger <nneul at umr.edu> writes:
> 
> > I don't see why you can't softlink/symlink the install of gnucash...
> > That's what I do for all unix software installs as well, and it works
> > fine with them and gnucash.
> > 
> > -- Nathan
> 
> I'm still not sure what you mean.  Gnucash needs to know the path
> to itself... Obviously you can add symlinks pointing to that path.
> For example, you could easily have gnucash installed into /opt/gnucash/...
> but have a symlink from /usr/bin/gnucash -> /opt/gnucash/bin/gnucash.
> Sure, that would work just fine, but the symlinking is outside and
> irrelevant to the gnucash installation.
> 
> -derek
> 
> > On Fri, 2003-04-04 at 17:29, Derek Atkins wrote:
> > > Laurent Duperval <lduperval at videotron.ca> writes:
> > > 
> > > > On  4 Apr, Derek Atkins wrote:
> > > > > That's what I thought.   This is _WRONG_.
> > > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > No it's not. Every piece of software I compile is compiled and installed
> > > > like this and they all work. Doing this allows you to do soft-linking in
> > > > any directory and it will alway work.
> > > 
> > > WTF is "soft linking"?
> > > 
> > > And yes, it is wrong.  "gnucash" is not "every piece of software".
> > > I'm trying to tell you what you need to do with GnuCash.  It doesn't
> > > matter if lots of other stuff works differently, this is how GnuCash
> > > works.  Jumping up and down and ignoring the directions you are given
> > > because you think it should work differently is not the way to convince
> > > people it's broken.
> > > 
> > > Basically, if you're not going to follow directions, then maybe you
> > > can go find someone else to hand-hold you.  I'm trying to help.  Don't
> > > ignore what I'm saying.
> > > 
> > > > > You should run:
> > > > > 
> > > > >         ./autogen.sh --prefix=/usr/local/soft/gnucash/run/i686_pc_linux
> > > > > 
> > > > 
> > > > That's what I used to do but this breaks soft-linking. When I complained
> > > > about this (for other applications), I was told that when using
> > > > autoconf, you should use the --prefix when running make install, not
> > > > when running configure (or autogen in this case), if you plan on doing
> > > > softlinking.
> > > 
> > > As I said, I don't know what "soft-linking" is in terms of software
> > > installation.  Basically, gnucash needs to know where it's going to be
> > > installed when you configure it.  Period.  End of story.  You have to
> > > tell it during the configuration phase.  You cannot change it during
> > > the installation phase.
> > > 
> > > If you want to install into a temporary directory, like how .deb or
> > > .rpm is built, you need to use the LIBRARY_PATH environment variable
> > > when you "make install" in order to get the re-link process to work
> > > properly.  You need to do:
> > > 
> > > DESTDIR=/tmp/path
> > > prefix=/usr/real/path
> > > 
> > > env LIBRARY_PATH=$(DESTDIR)$(prefix)/lib:$(DESTDIR)$(prefix)/lib/gnucash \
> > >         make install DESTDIR=$(DESTDIR)
> > > 
> > > > I will also note that this used to work but then, sometime in the life
> > > > of the 1.7.x series, it suddenly broke. I'd also mentioned it at the
> > > > time.
> > > 
> > > AFAIK this _never_ worked..  It certainly never worked for me.  This
> > > is how it works now....
> > > 
> > > Part of the broken is the version of libtool we're using.  I do
> > > not expect this to be changed in the 1.8 series, but hopefully
> > > we can "fix" this for 2.0 (or 1.10).
> > > 
> > > -derek
> > -- 
> > 
> > ------------------------------------------------------------
> > Nathan Neulinger                       EMail:  nneul at umr.edu
> > University of Missouri - Rolla         Phone: (573) 341-4841
> > Computing Services                       Fax: (573) 341-4216
> > 
-- 

------------------------------------------------------------
Nathan Neulinger                       EMail:  nneul at umr.edu
University of Missouri - Rolla         Phone: (573) 341-4841
Computing Services                       Fax: (573) 341-4216



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