Re: Berkeley DB : Solaris : gnome-libs

[Drazen Kacar <dave srce hr>]

David T. Bath wrote:

> Question for interim:
> ---------------------
> Let's assume I have the db.h libdb.so from the Solaris
> Sparc helix distribution installed in their standard
> position (under /opt/gnome/....).  Does anyone know
> any magic invocations to gnome-libs configure to get
> it to correctly pick up the db stuff?

It's been a very long time since I built DB on Solaris, so I don't
remember the details, but all my gnome-libs builds didn't have a
configure problem with it.

> Question for gnome-libs developers:
> -----------------------------------
> Why cannot gdbm be used instead of db?  The advantages

I don't know. Maybe because gdbm is no longer maintained because
Berkeley DB exists?

> on non-Linux systems are pretty obvious, primarily lack
> of conflict with vendor-provided db libraries (if they

Any decent system should provide a way to resolve potential conflicts
with vendor provided libraries. On Solaris it's done with runpaths
encoded in ELF objects.

> exist) and the lack of potential licence problems.  If

I think there are no licence problems for Gnome.

> BTW: Hint for SparcSolaris2.6 users for quickstart.
> Apart from the gnome-libs problem mentioned, I found
> that you could use your linux box to turn the Helixcode
> sparc rpm files into cpio files, then simply unpack.

You can do it on Solaris too, if you have rpm2cpio. Solaris 8 comes
with it. For older releases you'll have to install it yourself.

> While many files look for librt.so.x, copy libposix4.so.x
> to librt.so.x and the basic tools work.  You will need

Don't do this. Helix GNOME was compiled on Solaris 7. Nobody guarantees
that it would work on Solaris 2.6. (Sun guarantees it would work on
Solaris 8, except for libgtop). While this particular kludge may work on
your box at this point in time, it doesn't mean it will still work after
you apply a single patch to your system.

Basicaly, you're trying to shoot yourself in the foot with this.
If you're prepared to deal with the consequences, that's fine.
But don't give this advice to others without a big warning.

> to edit the gnome-config script, replacing -lrt with
> -lposix4.  You can then start recompiling things like

This is a more general problem. Basicaly it means that Gnome build
system is going against the recommended build instructions for
Solaris. It isn't a bug, but it's a sort of "if you do things that
way, you'll have problems, so don't cry later."

> libgtop and gtop (getting rid of the libgen.so dependency).
> But gnome-libs remains the problem - hence this note

If Gnome build system was doing it right on Solaris, then you would
be able to patch gnome-libs in order to replace DB code with gdbm
code, recompile and reinstall the library (or libraries, I don't
know if a single library uses DB, or there are several) and
everything else would work without further intervention.

The above is just an example which has nothing to do with using
binaries on older release than the one where they were compiled.
Don't do that. But it should be possible to replace inter-library
dependencies on the same OS release without much trouble. Currently
it's not.

-- 
 .-.   .-.    I don't work for my employer.
(_  \ /  _)
     |        dave srce hr
     |        dave fly srk fer hr