Re: Patch to check for required programs when building from source checkout

[Pádraig Brady]

Jim Meyering wrote:
> Ed Avis <address@hidden> wrote:
>> Jim Meyering <jim <at> meyering.net> writes:
>>
>>>> A few tools are required to build coreutils from a git checkout, but
>>>> not checked in a friendly way.
>>> The newer automake-1.10a is actually required.
>> Ah, ok, it could do with a comment because at first it appears that 1.10.1
>> should be newer than 1.10a.
> 
> That's a common misconception.
> When in doubt, use sort -V from the latest coreutils:
> 
>     $ printf 'automake-1.10%s\n' .1 a|sort -V
>     automake-1.10.1
>     automake-1.10a
> 
> That demonstrates 1.10a is considered the newer version.

Just some notes on the dependencies are they're currently
a little bleeding edge. This stuff is second nature to me,
though I know it gives lots of people conniptions.

Note I try to keep everything on my system packaged,
but automake-1.10a is not released so you need to get from git.
So here is a log of how I just built the latest coreutils repo
on my Fedora 8 machine:

$ git clone git://git.sv.gnu.org/automake.git
$ (cd automake && ./configure --prefix=$HOME/coreutils/deps)
 configure: error: Autoconf 2.61a-341 or better is required.
# rpmbuild --rebuild 
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/development/source/SRPMS/autoconf-2.63-1.fc10.src.rpm
 emacs is needed by autoconf-2.63-1.fc8.noarch
 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=79031
# yum install emacs #20MB
# rpmbuild --rebuild 
http://download.fedora.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/development/source/SRPMS/autoconf-2.63-1.fc10.src.rpm
# rpm -Uvh /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/noarch/autoconf-2.63-1.fc8.noarch.rpm
$ (cd automake && make install)
  WARNING: `help2man' is missing on your system.  You should only need it if
  make[1]: *** [automake-1.10a.1] Error 1
# yum install help2man
$ (cd automake && make install)
$ cd coreutils
$ rm -Rf gnulib #pickup latest gnulib
$ ./bootstrap
$ ./configure
$ make

cheers,
Pádraig.