Survex 1.1.6 development snapshot uploaded

[Olly Betts]

On Mon, Oct 10, 2005 at 11:21:31PM +0100, Andy Waddington wrote:
> The INSTALL file for 1.1.6 says "you might want to install one of
> the prepackaged Linux versions". Well there isn't one, so "building
> from source is very easy ..."

No, there *ARE* prepackaged Linux versions...

For Debian:

http://www.survex.com/software/1.1.6/survex_1.1.6_i386.deb

And also for Redhat and other RPM using distributions:

http://www.survex.com/software/1.1.6/survex-1.1.6-1.src.rpm

> Following the (bog-standard) instructions, the ./configure script
> whinges a bundle
> 
> 1) checking for X ... no
> 
> despite the fact that I am running the script in a Konsole window
> on a KDE desktop - looks to me that I have X ! xcaverot and aven from
> 1.0.34 also seem to believe I have X :) XFRee86 -version says I have
> XFree86 v 4.3.0.1

Yes, but you probably only have the X runtime libraries, not those
required to actually build applications which use X.  Linux
distributions typically split a library into a runtime package and a
development package.  On Debian, the latter is usually named as the
former but with "-dev" appended.

The build dependencies for Debian are:

xlibs-dev, libwxgtk2.4-dev

Also make sure you have the build-essential package installed (you'll want
that if you're planning to build pretty much any software at all).

You also seem to need libxxf86vm-dev on Ubuntu.  I assume that's a
difference between the X.org X server and the XFree86 one so will be
required when Debian moves to using X.org.

> so I tried
> 
> apt-get install wxgtk-2.6-config
> ...
> apt-get wxWindows
> 
> all of which say "Couldn't find package <whatever>"

As the error message suggests, neither of those is a package name.  I'd
recommend installing a more user-friendly package manager (synaptic
isn't bad) if you don't know how to use apt-* and dpkg and don't want to
have to read the documentation.  With synaptic you'd suggest click
"Search" and type in "wxWindows" to find the packages.

> Nothing in the INSTALL or README file sys what packages I need to install
> to meet the dependencies for the build. So I'm stuck. I presume this is a
> documentation issue, rather than a software one ?

If you're using Debian, we assume you'll just install the Survex Debian
package we supply which will pull in the required dependencies for you.

Similarly if you're using RPMs, we point you to the wx RPMs from the
download page (instructions inside the RPM would be hard to read until
you'd successfully installed at which point you would no longer need
them!)

For those on other Linux distributions or UNIX versions, INSTALL should
probably point out you need wxWindows/wxWidgets, though the error
message tells you pretty clearly.  But packages are named for
consistency within a distribution not between distributions so it's not
easy to list what the actual packages you need are on platforms I don't
use.  Better to let people do a search in their package manager (for
example, use synaptic as above, or "apt-cache search wxwindows" or
"apt-cache search wxwidgets").

There is a situation on Debian where you do need to know which packages
are required, and that's if you want to build from CVS (only recommended
for truly hardcore hackers) so that's documented on the CVS page:

http://www.survex.com/cvs.html

The list is longer, since you need the tools to generate the configure
script etc.

Cheers,
    Olly