Re: Confused about source code of coreutils

[Bob Proulx]

Alexander Kahl wrote:
> I tried coreutils from CVS which gave me the following error:
> 
>     sh: build-aux/git-version-gen: No such file or directory

The CVS depot is no longer used by the development team.  While this
is still a rather recent change it has already grown stale and no
longer builds from source.  It is now deprecated and so no effort is
being spent to keep it going.  Eventually I expect it to be disabled
entirely.

> After that I tried coreutils from GIT and got those errors:

Create a git clone like this:

  git clone git://git.sv.gnu.org/coreutils

Coreutils uses gnulib along with other projects and so I find it
convenient to clone gnulib in a sibling directory next to coreutils
where it can be shared by several projects.

  git clone git://git.sv.gnu.org/gnulib

Then in the coreutils directory bootstrap it this way.  (I don't
usually build the translations in a development copy.)

  ./bootstrap --skip-po --gnulib-srcdir=../gnulib

But!  Before doing this look in the README-hacking file.  *BEFORE*
building coreutils from development sources you will need to build all
of the required build dependencies.

A typical GNU/Linux system will likely have most of the normal
dependencies such as gcc and bison and others as documented in the
README-hacking file.  But among the likely candidates for packages
that will need special treatment are:

  autoconf-2.61
  automake-git-70bca13b
  gettext-0.16.1
  m4-1.4.8

Those are the minimum version levels that work for me to build
coreutils at this time.  In particular you must get the current
automake from git commit 70bca13b or later.

  git clone git://sources.redhat.com/git/automake

The need for all of these steps are what make the coreutils snapshots
quite useful.  They are self-contained and do not need all of the
development tools available.

  http://meyering.net/cu/coreutils-6.9-322-b6904.tar.gz       8.4M
  http://meyering.net/cu/coreutils-6.9-322-b6904.tar.gz.sig
  http://meyering.net/cu/coreutils-6.9-322-b6904.tar.lzma     3.5M
  http://meyering.net/cu/coreutils-6.9-322-b6904.tar.lzma.sig

Hope that helps.

Bob