[PLUG] Compiling Varkon (was OpenGL Libraries?)

[Kenneth G. Stephens]

On Sat, 2005-04-23 at 13:17 -0700, Richard C. Steffens wrote:
> On Saturday 23 April 2005 9:55 am, Kenneth G. Stephens wrote:
> 
> > Getting the prerequisites is always fun.  That's why there are rpm, apt-
> > get, yum, yast, yast2, etc. The way I find what packages to load is to
> > use Google on the error message.  You are not the first and certainly
> > won't be the last to need this.  And, oh yes, read the documentation
> > that came with the application. [RTFM].
> 
> Well, as I mentioned in the last episode, I read the documentation, but 
> misunderstood it. Now that I have all the prerequisites (at least I think I 
> do) I'm on to another item that, while mentioned in the documentation, 
> conflicts with my admittedly rudimentary understanding of the conventions of 
> permissions on directories and compiling programs. From past discussions, 
> I've come to believe that one should compile programs as a normal user, and 
> not as root. So, that is what I've attempted to set up, here.
> 
> The docs tell me that I'll have to have read/write access to things. I created 
> a directory in /usr called varkon and set it's ownership to be rsteff:users, 
> which is what a number of other directories of mine were set to during 
> installation of SuSE 9.1. I guessed at this, and it appears to be what the 
> developers intended. I untared the download file in /usr/varkon and that 
> process created  /usr/varkon/varkon_1.18A, which the docs refer to. So, 
> unless I'm missing something, I have read/write access to anything in varkon. 
> Apparently, that's not enough. I ran:
> 
> make > make.out 2> err.out
> 
> Here's the error message I get (the last 5 lines of err.out, which has a lot 
> of warnings but, as far as I can see, just this one error):
> 
> /usr/lib/gcc-lib/i586-suse-linux/3.3.3/../../../../i586-suse-linux/bin/ld: 
> cannot open output file /bin/mbsc: Permission denied
> collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
> make[1]: *** [/bin/mbsc] Error 1
> make: *** [distr] Error 2
> 
> I'm not to sure what that first line means, the one with all the /../../../ 
> stuff going on, but I think I understand that make can't create a file called 
> mbsc in /bin. Is it possible that I'm supposed to give rsteff:users write 
> access to /bin? Or am I way off the track?
> 

Sorry if I was snippy and rude before, did not mean to be.

Instructions and documentation can and do have mistakes.  Usually when
installing software from source, the source files are placed under
the /usr/local/src directory.  This directory should be open to users to
place their source code there.  Then make and compile your source and
test it as a user.  Only after deeming it safe for the system, do admins
install it as root.

The easier and more nicely done programs have a configure command that
creates the proper make file for the application.  The not so nice
programs require one to create the make file.

Looks like the make is trying to write to the /bin directory.  mbsc is
the Varkon script compiler.

See http://www.marcdatabase.com/~lemur/vk-install.html#installation
-- 
Ken Stephens
CAD 2 CAM