Hi, Peter and Andy > P.S. Does this mean that people have to manually install autotools if they > want to build from source? Almost like installing java, if so. If the system does not have current versions, yes. But almost all installations I know have more or less current versions of autotools (or at least the versions which are needed to build things on this platform. If you want to create a "configure" which runs on the newest systems, you naturally need to get a version which covers them, e.g. MAC darwin. The maintainer producing the official installation tarballs should always use recent versions). Autotools is certainly not a beautiful streamlined solution, but it is the standard and is used by a wide number of packages. Abstracting all kinds of compiler and linker differences is by the nature of things an ugly task, and one can only hope that this will improve over time, so that the internals of things like autotools need no longer be so complex. > Secondly, I was ready to commit my XrdPosix preload changes but now am > completely mystified on what I have to do to make autools realize than I > have more shared libraries to build. I think I know how to add the new > source files but otherwise am stumped. Using autotools needs a bit of learning the syntax for defining build targets, but it is very easy. If you tell me what you want to do I'll gladly help you to get over the first few steps - it's quite straightforward. There is also the online autobook I was referring to in previous mails: http://sources.redhat.com/autobook/autobook/autobook_toc.html > A couple of things. As for the krb support, SLAC installs kerberos in the > "non-standard" location so unless there is a special check, autotools will > complain. I belive that was fixed a while ago but seems o have come back. This is my failure. I had it in an earlier version but was dissatisfied with the way it was done. Actually I'm still a bit opposed to the fact that a generic configure should contain site specific installation directories, but I'm just adding it now and I'll check it in with Gerri (the locations can always be given via the additional flags, and then you are absolutely sure that the correct location is chosen). Cheers, Derek On Wednesday 19 October 2005 09.57, Peter Elmer wrote: > Hi Andy, > > On Tue, Oct 18, 2005 at 11:15:24PM -0700, Andrew Hanushevsky wrote: > > P.S. Does this mean that people have to manually install autotools if > > they want to build from source? Almost like installing java, if so. > > Well, if you go and look at the installation at SLAC you'll see that > it was done in 1998. I think it is okay to upgrade once and a while.. ;-) > As I usually do for these things, I installed it in my area to test > before asking unix-admin at SLAC to update to new versions in the SLAC > afs area for Solaris. For linux this works out-of-the-box, I believe. > > Pete > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- > Peter Elmer E-mail: [log in to unmask] Phone: +41 (22) 767-4644 > Address: CERN Division PPE, Bat. 32 2C-14, CH-1211 Geneva 23, Switzerland > ------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Dr. Derek Feichtinger Tel: +41 22 767 10 07 LCG/ARDA Group email: [log in to unmask] CERN http://people.web.psi.ch/feichtinger CH-1211 Genève 23