Re: Compiling M4 via CVS

[Eric Blake]

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According to STEVE555 on 8/11/2007 6:11 PM:

> 
> My O.S is Kubuntu Feisty Fawn version 7.04
> 
> My GCC version is from the SVN repository last compiled on Friday.

Danger - do you REALLY mean to be running an unreleased gcc, before even
getting a stable system up and running?

> I got my CVS copy of m4 by issuing the command from Konsole:
> cvs -d:pserver:address@hidden:/sources/m4 co m4

Did you want to compile the branch-1_4, or HEAD?  HEAD requires more
effort, in part because it requires libtool, but that's what the command
above grabbed.

> 
> After my copy of m4 had downloaded,I went to the m4 folder where CVS had
> downloaded it.
> I then right-clicked on the folder and selected "open a terminal form here".
> When Konsole fired up I got this ouput after issuing the command
> ./bootstrap:
> 
> address@hidden:~/m4$ ./bootstrap
> bootstrap: getting translations into ./po for m4...
...
> bootstrap: running: autopoint --force
> cvs init: Unable to register repository.
> cvs init: Your login may not have sufficient permissions to modify the
> cvs init: global server settings.
> cvs [checkout aborted]: /home/steve/m4/tmpcvs31561/CVSROOT: No such file or
> directory

Not quite sure what was happening there, nor whether it matters if gettext
is properly installed; if you want to learn more about those lines,
bug-gettext is a better resource.  However, one thing was obvious:

> autopoint: *** infrastructure files for version 0.16 not found; this is
> autopoint from GNU gettext-tools 0.16.1

Aha - you can't bootstrap CVS HEAD of m4 without gettext 0.16.1 installed
first.  If you ABSOLUTELY have to have an unreleased m4, then you will
probably have better results with branch-1_4: go to the m4 checkout
directory, and issue 'cvs up -r branch-1_4' to convert your checkout to
track the latest on the branch; the branch has the nice property of not
requiring gettext or libtool.

> autopoint: *** Stop.
> bootstrap: running: gnulib-tool --update

Another problem of yours.  Did you even _read_ the README and HACKING
files available in your checkout?  You have to have a gnulib checkout
available to bootstrap m4.

Again, I reiterate my thoughts on the matter - the number of problems you
are encountering with building unreleased software seem to indicate that
you may be better off sticking with released versions, where the
bootstrapping has already been done on your behalf.

- --
Don't work too hard, make some time for fun as well!

Eric Blake             address@hidden
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