Porting to FreeBSD

Daniela dgw at liwest.at
Fri Oct 24 15:48:55 PDT 2003


On Saturday 18 October 2003 20:02, Manuel Rabade wrote:
> On Fri, Oct 17, 2003 at 08:11:23PM +0000, Daniela wrote:
> > 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.
>
> If something is missing, you sould look at the ports tree (/usr/ports) and
> install it, maybe you could need to modifiy the paths for the configure
> script of the dependencies (check ./configure --help of the soure that you
> want to install).

I tried to hack a few configure scripts, sometimes there were really just 
problems with the library paths. But there are also some strange issues which 
I can't resolve.
One non-free RPM tells me it can't find /bin/sh when I do a rpm -i.
And another one can't find Javascript, but I don't know what exactly it needs, 
as there are many implementations. I assumed it's spidermonkey from the ports 
and pointed it to the right location, but it still complains.

Regards,
Daniela




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