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Re: mail being held for moderator approval


From: Carol Spears
Subject: Re: mail being held for moderator approval
Date: Mon, 17 Oct 2005 09:55:11 -0700
User-agent: Mutt/1.5.9i

On Mon, Oct 17, 2005 at 06:16:28PM +0200, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> * Carol Spears wrote on Mon, Oct 17, 2005 at 06:11:55PM CEST:
> > 
> > i sent a bug here before i subscribed and it awaits moderator approval.
> > being a moderator of a mail list myself, i humbly ask if i should resend
> > the email now that i have subscribed?
> 
> Not necessary, I've approved it already (and added you to the list of
> preapproved, as we do with every nonmber unless we forget :).
> It's already out with the list, but the web archive will need another
> day or so. :-/
> 
you are a far better moderator than i!

> I don't understand your bug report (yet) though..
> 
i am at a disadvantage when it comes to explaining my problems; while i
have been using the gnu build tools since 1998, i have also learned
about them from the wrong direction.  perhaps an avid user who doesn't
understand them until they break.  let me explain what i am trying to
do.

it all started when my friend built gtk+-2.8.4 for windows and my
distribution, debian sid, only provides gtk+-2.6.something.  this is
embarrassing to me.  it is the gimp toolkit and it is gimp that i am
using -- on linux.  gnu/linux if i can type this and have it not destroy
my little life again or more.  with this stress, i started to attempt to
build the gimp tool kit from cvs because there needs to be more linux
users in development or at least able to build and install this stuff.
this problem is emotionally motivated.

eventually my goal was to build everything that uses this tool kit that
i use.  gimp, my desktop, a media player.  i guess my browser uses the
gimp tool kit as well but that "abstraction layer" makes it difficult
for me to see this.  originally, i did not want to use a distribution
beyond the installation.  it seemed very easy to rebuild the stuff i
needed.  the gimp developers insisted on it and they use debian sid to
guage their dependencies on -- i can see how this works.

okay, fast forward to my current problem with libtool.  i carefully
installed a few binaries from debian that i did not feel capable of
building.  an xserver from X.org, cairo, and the freetype font renderer.
gtk+ from cvs wants a newer glib and pango than i can get from debian.
i actually was able to install pango from debian experimental
successfully for a couple of weeks.  that is all distribution games
though.

the promise (for lack of a different word) was that you could just use a
binary from your distribution without the headers and things needed to
build software with.  that would be the files ending in .h and perhaps
other buildtools (gimp has a compiler helper called gimptool, for
instance)(?).  this is where my user language is going to not help me, i
think -- so much of this i understand merely from watching the compiler
spew.

i successfully built glib from cvs.  now i have a binary from debian
installed in /usr but not the parts needed to build things with.
ld.config understands this and only links to the glib i built since it
is complete.  libtool finds the incomplete glib that i allowed debian to
install.  when libtool finds debians old library, it breaks my build.
it breaks it during the testing because of misinformation.

the solution, as i understand it, is to totally change the way me and
the gnu build tools have worked (with the distribution) for all those
years.  it took me a long while to understand the dynamics of compiler
linking.  i am loathing the idea of one tool making this whole awesome
system break.  the solution involves me building without ldconfig.  i
will have to feed a different prefix to every other tool for this one.

all of the other tools look for .h files and libtool looks for .la
files?  this is where the problem is, if i understand it correctly.

here is some more emotional and political crap i am dealing with.  i
avoided building this stuff from cvs for so long because apparently i
had to install jade to be able to get this bleeding edge software.
something about how auto* works and to be able to trigger the build of
the docbook documentation the choice to build it was not allowed (or
something like this).  when i was able to hack around that crap (i
should not need to install anything docbook to be able to build widgets)
i was feeling very very good about things.  this problem is sort of a
party pooper in my fun little build of my desktop and favorite graphics
application.  and the windows people are going to have a tool kit before
the linux people are.  something about this is so very very wrong and i
need to do what i can to stop it from happening.  

believe it or not, i am filing this bug report because of so many years
of pride in the build system.

maybe you should ask questions instead of me trying to describe it....

carol





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