Porting to FreeBSD

[Daniela]

On Thursday 16 October 2003 21:32, Karel J. Bosschaart wrote:
> On Thu, Oct 16, 2003 at 04:44:17PM -0400, Charles Swiger wrote:
> > On Thursday, October 16, 2003, at 06:11 PM, Daniela wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> > >I can't even compile most of the programs on my system, and I'm almost
> > >sure it
> > >has to do with dependencies in 99% of all cases.  How do I find out
> > >what ports/programs it depends on? And yes, I have RTFM, but I still
> > >have no clue.
> >
> > Most programs have a README which identifies any dependencies they
> > might have.  If a Linux package exists for the program (ie, such as an
> > RPM), you could also look at that to gain an idea as to the
> > dependencies.   Beyond that, however, the problem lies in the fact that
> > many people don't write particularly portable code, and you will need
> > to resolve such issues by patching the program to work under FreeBSD.
>
> Adding to this: try 'gmake' instead of 'make'. Most programs written
> for Linux assume the GNU version of make which is different from BSD
> make. gmake is in the ports collection, and if you installed some ports
> it is quite likely you already have it as a (build) dependency.


I have the most problems with the configure scripts. They keep telling me that 
something is missing, but either I don't know where to look for it, or I have 
it already installed and don't know why the script doesn't find it.