Difference between revisions of "Talk:Windows"

Revision as of 02:06, 28 November 2006

Errors using automated Windows build script

Hi everyone. I spent some of the Thanksgiving weekend trying to build GNUCash in Windows. Everything proceeded fairly well until I got to the autotools section of the build, at which point I got a vague error about requiring m4 version 1.4 or later. I checked, and the msys environment provided m4 version 1.4. I played around a little more, and finally went so far as to comment out the version check in the build script (I think it was autoconf/bin/autom4te) and that allowed the build to run a little further before it ran into another error (still in autoconf). I don't remember what the second one was, but the common thread in both cases was a reference to /dev/null. I don't know how msys handles /dev/null (there isn't a /dev directory in the environment), but Perl didn't seem real happy with it (I was able to do some testing at the command line to show that at least the shell doesn't throw an error when referencing /dev/null). I was wondering if anyone has successfully run the automated build recently? I tried to follow the directions on this page as closely as possible (did change mingw from 5.0.3 to 5.1.0 -- I had problems downloading and installing 5.0.3), but I'm assuming I did something wrong... Oh, and yes, I do have a reasonable amount of Linux experience, so feel free to get technical. --scbash 09:13, 27 November 2006 (EST)

I haven't seen this kind of error recently. As usual, copying the exact error message would be much more helpful - just mark the text in the msys window and press "Paste" in any other Windows window.

I don't think you should comment out any of the checks. Also, /dev/null is not a problem in the msys shell and it will be interpreted correctly similar to what we expected on the Linux side. I'd rather guess you got some version mixup, i.e. the m4 that was found during that check might have been a different one than should've been found. --Cstim 09:29, 27 November 2006 (EST)

I didn't feel all that good about changing the build either, but I wanted to see what might happen. I'll try to do a clean run tonight and get the exact error. Thanks. --scbash 10:46, 27 November 2006 (EST)

With a clean environment the build crashes when trying to build autoconf. Here is the last little bit of the make output before the crash:

make[2]: Leaving directory `/c/soft/tmp/autoconf-2.60/lib/m4sugar'
autom4te_perllibdir='..'/lib AUTOM4TE_CFG='../lib/autom4te.cfg'
../bin/autom4te -B '..'/lib -B '..'/lib --language M4sh --cache 
--melt ./autoconf.as -o autoconf.in
The system cannot find the path specified.
autom4te: need GNU m4 1.4 or later: /bin/m4
make[1]: *** [autoconf.in] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/c/soft/tmp/autoconf-2.60/bin'
make: *** [all-recursive] Error 1

But I think andi5 might be on to something, check below. --scbash 20:58, 27 November 2006 (EST)

Can you please check whether all the files install.sh::inst_dtk hides from the DTK to avoid clashes are masked for you too? -- andi5

After simply installing msys 1.0.10, and running install.sh the inst_dtk section outputs:

############################################################
###  MSYS DTK
############################################################
msys dtk already installed.  skipping.

which confuses me. I didn't install the DTK. I also looked for the files that inst_dtk tries to mask, and they don't exist! --scbash 20:46, 27 November 2006 (EST)

New thought: looking at inst_dtk, it checks if "perl --help" returns. I had ActivePerl pre-installed, so that may be the problem... No DTK is actually installed, the script just thinks the DTK is installed... --scbash 20:58, 27 November 2006 (EST)

Okay, forcing the DTK install got it past the m4 error listed above. Looks like my original install of ActivePerl was the problem. I commented out the check for "perl --help" in install.sh, restarted install.sh, and the build seems to be going along fine now. I'll let you know if I run into another issue. Thanks! --Scbash 21:06, 27 November 2006 (EST)

Updates required to automated build scripts

During my clean build tonight I had to change custom.sh to point to mingw 5.1.0. The 5.0.3 installer references mirror sites that don't seem to have the required files anymore. --scbash 20:46, 27 November 2006 (EST)