RedHat and libpng packages (was Re: Trouble with SWARM)

[Alex Lancaster]

>>>>> "MD" == Marcus G Daniels <address@hidden> writes:

CS> I had to link /usr/lib/libpng.so to /usr/lib/libpng.so.2 I don't
CS> know why ld couldn't handle the .2.  Theoretically, it is supposed
CS> to.

MD> Often a package like PNG will be broken up into `usage' and
MD> `development' packages.  It is the `development' component that
MD> will have the link from the versioned shared library filename to
MD> the plain .so name for the linker.

Hmm, I hadn't noticed before, but on my RedHat 5.2 and 6.0
installations, I do have libpng *and* libpng-devel both installed.  By
default I suspect that most RH systems probably have both libpng and
libpng-devel installed, otherwise this problem would have shown up
more frequently.

If you look at files distributed in each of these packages, you'll
notice that the plain .so comes in the libpng-devel package.  Which
means that it would have been perfectly possible to install Swarm
without that dependency:

address@hidden lib]$ rpm -ql libpng
/usr/doc/libpng-1.0.3
/usr/doc/libpng-1.0.3/CHANGES
/usr/doc/libpng-1.0.3/README
/usr/doc/libpng-1.0.3/TODO
/usr/doc/libpng-1.0.3/example.c
/usr/doc/libpng-1.0.3/libpng.txt
/usr/lib/libpng.so.2.1.0.3
/usr/man/man5/png.5    

address@hidden lib]$ rpm -ql libpng-devel
/usr/include/png.h
/usr/include/pngconf.h
/usr/lib/libpng.a
/usr/lib/libpng.so
/usr/man/man3/libpng.3
/usr/man/man3/libpng.so.2.1.0.3
/usr/man/man3/libpngpf.3   

So we will add `libpng-devel' as a dependency for Swarm in the RPM
.spec file to avoid this problem in the future.

Alex

-- 
  Alex Lancaster           |  e-mail: address@hidden
  Swarm Program            |     web: http://www.santafe.edu/~alex
  Santa Fe Institute       |     tel: +1-(505) 984-8800 (ext 242)
-------------------------------------------------------------------

                  ==================================
   Swarm-Support is for discussion of the technical details of the day
   to day usage of Swarm.  For list administration needs (esp.
   [un]subscribing), please send a message to <address@hidden>
   with "help" in the body of the message.