Re: misshaps on RedHat and Slackware

[Alex Lancaster]

>>>>> "PJ" == Paul Johnson <address@hidden> writes:

PJ> Dear Sylvester: Swarm is intended for use on any system that
PJ> supports gcc and other GNU tools.  I am proving RPMS for RedHat
PJ> linux because RedHat is what I happen to use, but we are eager to
PJ> have people provide packages for other operating systems or
PJ> versions of Linux. I vigorously assure you none of the development
PJ> work on Swarm is in any way oriented to RedHat because there is no
PJ> developer who uses RedHat linux! (except for me, and I just piddle
PJ> around doing little particular things I want).

Actually I use both Red Hat 7.3 (at home, soon to upgrade to 8.0!) and
Slackware 8.1 (at work).  

I have succesfully built snapshots of Swarm on both systems in the
past, although I haven't had time to build it of late.

PJ> Rather it is best to say we are heavily invested in the idea of
PJ> Free Software, GNU automake, autoconf, make, gcc, libtool, gperf,
PJ> tcl/tk/blt. These are all things you can download, read about, and
PJ> install in your system in order to build Swarm.

Exactly we're not distro-specific, but we are only reliant on a 100%
free software (open-source) tool-chain, which, by definition, can
always be recompiled on any system.

PJ> About 1 year ago--when I was using RH7.1, I did provide Swarm RPMS
PJ> and info for that system. You probably need to check out:

PJ> http://lark.cc.ku.edu/~pauljohn/Swarm/Swarm-2.x_RPMSforRH7/

PJ> That dir has material from the time I was using RH7 and 7.1.  It
PJ> looks to me like I did not build versions for both i386 and i686
PJ> every time, but you have a big selection of snapshots. The
PJ> comments I give indicate that about version 2.1.72 is when I was
PJ> using RH7.1. If you notice the directory structure I have there,
PJ> then it indicates I started a new directory for RH7.2, so I
PJ> believe that means the newest one in the RH7 directory will be the
PJ> last one I built with RH7.1. The newest one requires a version of
PJ> gcc3.0.1 I describe.

One question I do have to Paul who has built recent snapshots on CVS,
is whether it's 100% necessary to have a GCC > 3.0 to build it?

I have had trouble with building Swarm with GCC 2.95.3 on my Slackware
box, but was not sure whether that was just because of setup/Slackware
weirdness.  Since I've been out of the loop in terms of building Swarm
of late, Which change, exactly, was made that meant that Swarm needed
at least 3.0?

PJ> The problems you are experiencing are somewhat unusual because you
PJ> are not following the recommended package management scheme.

PJ> 1. blt comes with the RedHat distribution. I suspect the trouble
PJ> you are having installing the blt rpm is because you are using a
PJ> blt edition that is not from RH itself.

PJ> At one time, we all had to build blt on our own and it requires
PJ> one to get the sources of tcl/tk, situate the blt source inside
PJ> there, do configure etc with some flags.  So, if you don't have a
PJ> blt intended for your distribution, forget it. Just build blt on
PJ> your own if that's where you are at.

Just FYI, the "blt" package was removed from Red Hat Linux 8.0, so we
we/you may need to take the spec file for the last 7.3 version of blt,
and rebuild it for Red Hat 8.0 when you get up to installing 8.0.  We
would then have to undertake distributing the RPM for BLT from then
on. :-(

...unless we can convince the good folks at freshrpms.net (or
somesuch) to include it in their fine collection of clean custom RPMs.

A.
-- 
      Alex Lancaster |  Swarm Development Group  |  http://www.swarm.org


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