Re: [ILUG] Newby to Linux looking for information on cvs

From: Michael Conry (michael.conry at domain ucd.ie)
Date: Fri 06 Sep 2002 - 01:31:29 IST


On 0020 +0100 %{!Thu, Sep 05, 2002 at 11:53:32PM +0100}, Darragh wrote:
> the help that I received today. Then though I tried to build them. I
> started by trying the w3 program. I used the following lines which produced
> some strange results. Would any one be able to set me straight?
>
> ./configure --with-emacs --prefix=/usr/local/src/beta/w3 --exec-prefix=/usr/
> local/src/beta/w3 --with-url=/url/url
One thing I _think_ you might be doing slightly wrong is your
specification of prefixes. --prefix is the directory to be used as root
for _installing_ files. Typically packages use /usr/local as default
(so binaries might then go in /usr/local/bin, documentation in
/usr/local/doc and so forth).
Normally, I find it sufficient to put --prefix=/usr/local, and do not
further specify things like --exec-prefix.

Maybe you have a special reason for using the prefixes you chose, in
which case ignore me!
> That worked fine so I moved to the next step.
> make
> At the bottem of the text I got the following messages:
> Cannot open load file: /url/url/url-vars.el
> make[1]: *** [custom-load.el] Error 255
> make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/src/beta/w3/lisp'
> make: *** [w3] Error 2
>
> When I got around to trying the url package I had no problems. In saying
> that this doesn't necessarily mean that I was doing it right so below are
> the commands I used.
> ./configure --with-emacs --prefix=/url/url --exec-prefix=/url/url
I'd make the same remarks about prefixes here. I would use the command
    ./configure --with-emacs --prefix=/usr/local

To get w3 to compile, I think the with-url flag you should use is
    --with-url=/usr/local/share/emacs/site-lisp/
(Assuming you compiled/installed url with --prefix=/usr/local
Since you appear to have installed url in /url/url, configure w3 with
./configure --with-emacs --prefix=/usr/local/ --with-url=/url/url/share/emacs/site-lisp

A command you would have found useful would have been
    find / -name 'url-vars.el' -print
Which would have told you where the url-vars.el file was installed.

A program which is very useful is checkinstall
http://asic-linux.com.mx/~izto/checkinstall/
It allows you to install packages from source while still registering
them in the package management system of your distro (rpm,deb,tgz).
Instead of "make install" type "checkinstall", and a package is put
together and installed for you. Makes uninstallation simpler than it
might otherwise be.

-- 
Michael Conry   Ph.:+353-1-7161987, Web: http://www.acronymchile.com
Key fingerprint = 5508 B563 6791 5C84 A947  CB01 997B 3598 09DE 502C


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