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

[Jim Meyering]

Pádraig Brady <address@hidden> wrote:
> Jim Meyering wrote:
>> Thanks for writing that up.
>> Would you care to ensconce it somewhere more permanent?
>
> How about the attached?

Thanks!
However, since your instructions are Fedora 8-specific (and hence
guaranteed to be far less useful in a year or two), I hesitate to
put it in this file.  Also, you probably didn't realize, but that file
deliberately minimizes mentions of coreutils, because I've used it almost
verbatim in a couple other projects, e.g., idutils.  The only varying
part is the list of required tools.

And even that, ... prompted by recent suggestions from Ed Avis, I've been
thinking about how best to do what he wants (bootstrap-time version/prereq
tests) without compromising generality.  Looking at README-hacking,
I think I found a good way:

have README-hacking refer to a list of files with package-name,min-version
pairs and have bootstrap read that same file.  Then bootstrap would
be able to perform tests for the required tools, and README-hacking
would no longer have the per-package-varying list of prerequisites.

So, whether the list of pairs would go in bootstrap.cfg
or merely be in a separate file and be read by bootstrap.cfg
(former sounds better), I'm not sure...

Are you interested in doing something like that?

Regarding your build recipe, maybe we need a wiki?
New file?

Should we be having this discussion on the list? (probably ;-)
I should have Cc'd the list when I replied to you.
Better for "community."

>>From 02b071f098e824bacd36105126f83c974a472747 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> From: =?utf-8?q?P=C3=A1draig=20Brady?= <address@hidden>
> Date: Thu, 16 Oct 2008 10:59:02 +0100
> Subject: [PATCH] Elaborate on coreutils build dependencies
>
> README-hacking: Describe specific steps to build
> coreutils 7.0 on Fedora 8. The 3 methods described
> for making required packages available, should help
> clarify build requirements on any linux system at least.
> ---
>  README-hacking |   26 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++
>  1 files changed, 26 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
>
> diff --git a/README-hacking b/README-hacking
> index 2e3c83a..e1e639a 100644
> --- a/README-hacking
> +++ b/README-hacking
> @@ -22,6 +22,32 @@ tools we depend upon, including:
>  - Rsync <http://samba.anu.edu.au/rsync/>
>  - Tar <http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/>
>
> +Sometimes even the latest stable versions of the above tools do not suffice
> +thus requiring you get them directly from the repository and build them
> +to a location available to coreutils. For example, here is what is required
> +to build coreutils 7.0 on a Fedora 8 system.
> +
> +  Make sure offical git is installed
> +    # yum install git
> +
> +  The distro autoconf is too old, but there is a newer one available
> +  so we rebuild that and make it available to the full system:
> +    # yum install emacs #autoconf build requires 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
> +  Apply the same method to install the lzma package.
> +
> +  The latest released automake (1.10.1) was not new enough, so we download
> +  and build automake-1.10a.1 from its repository and make it available
> +  just to coreutils:
> +    # yum install help2man #required to build automake fully
> +    $ git clone git://git.sv.gnu.org/automake.git
> +    $ cd automake && ./configure --prefix=$HOME/coreutils/deps
> +    $ make install
> +
> +  Now we can build coreutils as described below, as
> +  long as $PATH starts with $HOME/coreutils/deps
> +
>  Valgrind <http://valgrind.org/> is also highly recommended, if
>  Valgrind supports your architecture.