Re: [LUG] Compiling

[Simon Waters <Simon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Richy.fennell@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
> This sounds almost to easy :-)
>
> How come i couldnt find this on the net????

Convention dictates it should be in the INSTALL file in the
distribution, they even give you a generic INSTALL which will be
put in place if one doesn't exist, so if you don't have an
INSTALL file, then the chances are your package doesn't follow
the GNU conventions.

http://www.amath.washington.edu/~lf/tutorials/autoconf/autoconf/autoconf.html#SEC80

This is all down to the GNU projects tools for packaging and
installing source code, it only happens this way because the GNU
project laid the foundations.

I remember when it was all Imake, you don't know you're born,
pass me my pipe.

The whole system gives me the creeps, most of this is a black
art to overcome the huge and pointless variations in underlying
libraries due to inadequate standards conformance. 

Fortunately the GNU project lifted most of the burden off the
shoulders of struggling programmmers, and built an illuminati of
m4 gurus who willing share (under LGPL) sophisticated macros,
that let the C programmer say "what I really want here is a 32
bit integer", or "is, and where, is the readline library on this
platform?".

I suspect vast arrays of Unix programs would never have been
ported off their original platforms without these tools.

Afraid my use of these tools would make the original authors cry
into their beer (and has on occaison), but with minimal know-how
GNU Chess now compiles just about anywhere (except for
environments which don't supply "gettimeofday" - i.e. some funny
Windows compilers).

What am I suppose to use instead of "gettimeofday" BTW? - I
should lookup the autoconf macros for wall clock time with
millisecond accuracy, but someone will know I hope. 

Simon

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