Re: [Gcl-devel] Re: xgcl on Linux works

[Camm Maguire]

Greetings all!  You appear to be having two issues with your build:

1) readline.  gcl is supposed to build with or without readline
   automatically.  Apparently what happened is that no readline
   library was found, but the main makefile put the init-readline eval
   into the gcl script anyway.  Here is the line:

        [ "$(RL_OBJS)" = "" ] || echo '   -eval '\''(si::init-readline)'\' \\;\

   If you could post the value of the RL_OBJS variable from the
   makedefs file in the top gcl directory, together with that section
   of your build output where make executes this line, I'd be
   appreciative. 

   In any case, you probably want readline!  It makes gcl use much
   easier, and can be turned off at runtime as you in effect did by
   removing the eval.

2) gmp.  Out of the box, gmp will build the fastest library it can for
   the compiling machine -- these may and often do use special cpu
   extension instructions (mmx, sse, sse2 ...) which can only run on
   certain sub-architectures of a general architecture, (e.g. sse2
   only on p4 of all x86, sse only on p3 and p4 of x86, etc.)

   Gcl takes the perspective that if a given user is compiling for
   herself, she should be able to get the fastest performance for
   her machine with minimal effort, and so by default allows gmp to
   optimally configure itself for the compiling machine.  This is not
   conducive to producing a package of course that can be installed on
   many different machines.



In general, both of these problems can be resolved for you by making
use of the Debian packaging setup.  'apt-get -b source gcl' will not
only complain if you don't have readline ("Build-dependencies" are
listed at the top of debian/control), but also configure gmp for the
lowest common denominator.  After successful building of the package,
you can then install on any Debian machine with "dpkg -i ...".  At
this point, you can probably just use the pre-built .deb for gcl from
the unstable distribution without problem.

One other detail -- gcl needs a small patch to the gmp library.  By
default, it will build its own copy of the entire library and link it
in statically.  Gcl's configure will take the option
--enable-dynsysgmp, which will then instruct the build instead to
compile the small patch only, and dynamically link against a
libgmp3.so found on the system.  The Debian package uses this option,
so a produced .deb will depend on libgmp3, and to build the .deb one
will need libgmp3-dev.

Take care,


Kay Nettle <address@hidden> writes:

> All the linux boxes have the same software installed.  
> 
> Hmmm, interesting.  I built gcl from the cvs repository and I get Illegal 
> instruction when I try to run it on my machine and craigievar which are PIII 
> machines.  I built that copy on a P4 and it seems to work just fine on any P4 
> I ran it on.  Perhaps if it was built on a PIII, it would run on both.
> 
> 
> 
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-- 
Camm Maguire                                            address@hidden
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