Re: [Bug-gnubg] FreeBSD

[Jim Segrave]

On Sun 11 Aug 2002 (19:29 +0200), Achim Mueller wrote:
> I just get to know FreeBSD 4.6. Is there any use in looking at it
> concerning gnubg? Any big differences in compiling? Or just another
> package management (packages and ports)?

Things known to be different:

You have to run autogen.sh, without it, you won't get a useable makefile.

FreeBSD make is significantly different than GNU make, so to build it
you have to do:

   gmake MAKE=gmake [target]

I haven't checked on a clean install of FreeBSD, recently, but I
believe the gettext and some of the other GNU utilities which are the
FreeBSD install may require updating before gnubg will build. As I
recall, it was gettext, glib and bison had problems, but then again, when I
started in late April/May, I was on FreeBSD 4.5 (or the end of 4.4).

The differences in the way malloc works under FreeBSD have been useful
in finding a couple of free/malloc/realloc problems, this is good from
a bug removal point of view, it's not so nice when you're the only one
hitting the problem.

I have never looked into how the ports tree is built, but at a guess -
maintaining ports is a very non-trivial undertaking. Doing so on a
target which moves as quickly as gnubg seems to be moving would
require someone with no job, no partner and no life. Or the port
version would always be hopelessly out of date with the current state
of gnubg.

-- 
Jim Segrave           address@hidden