[Axiom-developer] Re: [Fwd: AXIOM 138]

[Gabriel Dos Reis]

root <address@hidden> writes:

| Gaby,
| 
| Larry Lambe has been trying to build Axiom on a 64-bit SUSE box.
| One of the issues he ran into a couple problems and I pointed
| him at the build-improvements branch.


I build dayly axiom.build-improvements on x86_64-suse-linux.

| I'm not sure how you 
| handle the X11/lib64 issue.

This is the same issue as why you special-cased the Makefile for fedora4.

Autoconf has facilities to detect where X11 includes and libraries
are.  In particular it computes all the flags necessary to link
against X11.  The relevant portion of configure.ac.pamphlet on
build-improvements is:

   \section{Where is X11?}

   One of the thorniest issues with programs that use the X Window System
   is portability.  There exist many implementations of the X11
   specification, each with its own variations, extensions, and what
   not.  Designing hand-written, makefiles for such programs can be a
   daunting task, fraut with all kinds of traps.  Fortunately, Autoconf
   provides us with some help, namely the macro [[AC_PATH_X]] and
   [[AC_PATH_XTRA]].  The former searches the directories where the
   include files and the libraries file for X11 reside.  The later is an
   enhanced version that:
   \begin{itemize}
   \item computes the C compiler flags required by X;
   \item computes the linker flags required by X;
   \item checks for special libraries that some systems need in order to
      compile X programs;
   \item checks for special X11R6 libraries that need to be linked before
     the flag [[-lX11]].
   \end{itemize}

   <<locate X11>>=
   AC_PATH_XTRA
   ## Output directives for the C compiler
   AC_SUBST(X_CLFAGS)
   ## Output directives for the linker
   AC_SUBST(X_LIBS)
   ## Output any extra libraries required by X11
   AC_SUBST(X_EXTRA_LIBS)

   ## Finally, output the list of libraries that need to appear before -lX11
   ## Some part of Axiom depends on Xpm.  That library has kind uncertain
   ## future.  At some point in the past, it was deprecated, to be
   ## replaced by xpm-nox; then came back again.  So, its support may
   ## vary from system to system.  For the moment, we assume that if X11
   ## is found then, Xpm is already present.  Though, clearly that is a
   ## very optimistic assumption.  Long term, Axiom should get rid of
   ## dependence on Xpm.  A nearly fool-proof test would be probably
   ## inspired by AC_PATH_XTRA.  I don't have time to get to that
   ## complication right now.  Will fix later.
   X_PRE_LIBS="-lXpm $X_PRE_LIBS"
   AC_SUBST(X_PRE_LIBS)
   @

| ===============================================================
| 
| .....[snip].....
| 
| I am running SUSE 10.1, x86_64 and the make fails next by 
| looking in X11/lib and not X11/lib64.  Could this be fixed in 
| "configure"?  I changes to lib64 manually and the make concluded.  
| 
| .....[snip].....
| 
| However, it seems that hyperdoc is not working, specifically Browse.  I 
| typed "LIST" in the input field, clicked on "Domains" and it asked if I 
| wanted to see all domains.  I clicked "yes" and it brought up only 
| *PlaneAlgebraicCurvePlot and SingleInteger.  Finally, neither 2D or 3D 
| plotting work.  The latter is working in the Sept 2005 version that I 
| recompiled on my current system.  Should I try another branch?  Thanks,

on build-improvements, hyperdoc is not working because of a path issue
(fixed in --patch-50).  It was low priority for me, but I can fix it
quickly if Larry was to test the build-improvements branch and he
needs it.

-- Gaby