Re: Compile errors (was Re: Accessibility of Gnome panel / How to end session via keyboard)

["John Zitterkopf" <zitt mailist router cdmaster32 com>]

It's time for me to remove the foot I placed into my mouth earlier today.

Turns out that my frustration aimed in Mandrake's direction was not really
warranted.

While I'm still frustrated at Mandrakes lack of .src. files with the
downloadable ISOs; it was actually user error combined with lack of obvious
documentation.

I was able to compile the source today after about 15 hours worth of
attempts and false starts.
This saga began when I was unable to locate the src RPMs on the 3 ISO discs
I downloaded from Mandrake's WWW site. After spending hours looking on the
CDs for the source; I only able to locate it on a www site somewhere. I
tried briefly to download the source from mandrake themselves; but I
couldn't find them.

After I obtained the source from gnome.org; I was unable to compile it due
to missing .pc files... which I now know was/is the result of not having the
correct *-devel RPMs installed during installation time when I upgraded from
Mandrake 8.1.

I got side tracked by my creation of fake .pc files to satisfy the configure
script which caused the compile errors which started this thread. I only
created the fake .pc file after being unable to locate them in any packages
on disk 1 of the Mandrake ISOs. The "find" features of the gnoRPM and
similar tools does not appear to be much help. Neither did Google when
searching for the files that had the .pc filenames that the configure script
was requesting. I lost another 6hrs and walked away even more frustrated. A
simple how-to guide for creating a gnome development system from Mandrake
ISOs would have worked WONDERS here.

Today, I went back and found the *-devel RPMs on Disk2 and after fighting
the dependency battles with the various packages; I was finally able to
compile the source with no issues.

However, I still have more work to do:
1) I need to figure out how to use PATCH and the .spec files correctly. How
does one apply multiple patches to the same source tree with the patch
utility? How does one use the Mandrake included gnome-panel.spec files to
apply these patches? Again; lack of documentation or a how to is preventing
me from actually using the files properly.

2) I manually edited menu.c with vi and put Padraig's patch to enable the
"hot key" L for logout... but it didn't work. More on this in a separate
thread.

Things I learned:

1) gnome-panel sources are not included with the downloadable ISOs. Finding
the correct source RPM isn't trivial / easy.  (unfortunately, I didn't write
down the WWW site I found the source code at).
2) Don't fake the .pc files. They are usually included in similarly named
lib*-devel packages on Disk 2 of the 9.1 ISOs. (a few are on disk 1). There
are a lot of *-devel packages that are needed to get the necessary .pc
files... many of these packages require other packages which leads to
further RPM hell...
3) RPM dependencies are evil ... There has to be a better way.
4) Note to self: Learn how to use .spec files to install the patches in the
correct order to the source tree. Anyone have some tips / pointers in the
right direction?

John