GNU/Linux $HOME tarball tips

Dr. Michael L. Love, 2001.09.21

Warning: These instructions are still a work in progress and may contain inaccuracies or omissions. Be sure to read the APSL and the GPL, so that you will know your rights. Send any email regarding this document to proclus@gnu-darwin.org (Dr. Michael Love). Please remember that we are in alpha, so this procedure is for the adventurous. Almost all the packages work, but there are still many problems. Join the project, if you want them fixed!

1. Get what you need.
   Download the the ports tarball, and read the directions.
   http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/gnu-darwin/ports-user-linux.tar.gz
   http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=2001-09-20-013-20-NW-CY-BD
   Tip: Read the Slashdot treatment of this development.

2. There is a typo in the directions, which causes the binaries in ~/usr/local/bin to be unrecognized. Here is the correct path.

   PATH="$HOME/usr/local/bin:$HOME/usr/bin:$HOME/usr/X11R6/bin:$PATH"

3. Set Target
   Edit ~/usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port.mk at line 1275, and replace the configure target with one that is good for you. Use your imagination ;-}. Here is an example.

   CONFIGURE_TARGET= i686-unknown-linux

4. If a particular port fails, try this magic.

   % rm rf work/;make extract;cd work/*;./configure --prefix=/home/love/usr/local/ --enable-static --disable-shared ;cd ../;touch .configure_done;cd ..;make install

   Of course, you will have to change "love" to your username. Alternatively, try deleting the FreeBSD patches in the files directory. Although these files are mostly helpful for GNU-Darwin at this time, they are likely to be less helpful for GNU/Linux.

5. Build static libraries
   A quick way to get around the linux loader is to build static libraries. (Otherwise, you may need root access to modify the ldconfig path.)

6. Toggle LOCALBASE and X11BASE

   If there is some problem with the libraries in $HOME, then use the system libraries. Just toggle these variables by changing them in the Makefile like this.

   LOCALBASE=/usr/local

7. "I get the following error."

   Makefile:42: *** missing separator. Stop.

   This means that you are invoking GNU Make instead of the BSD Make that is provided with the ports tarball in ~/usr/bin. Make sure that ~/usr/bin comes before /usr/bin in your $PATH variable.

8. "I get an error about sys.mk."
   Check out ~/usr/share from CVS, and modify the make alias as follows.

   alias make '~/usr/bin/freemake -I ~/usr/ports/Mk -m ~/usr/share/mk'