Re: just now made an emacs (on gnome). Problem: thinks I'm vt100 or something!

[Jason Earl]

On Tue, Jan 18 2011, David Combs wrote:

> Just made an emacs (23.1) on Solaris 10 sparc.  Was
> using gnome when I did it.
>
> ./configure  ... ... --with-gif=no  ...
>
> Now, I thought that the use for libgif (or giflib?) was
> so that you could show *photographs*, things like that.
>
> (I used the with-gif=no because, on comp.unix.solaris,  that was 
> how I was told to do the configure.)
>
> Anyway, that and the make (gmake) worked ok.
>
> And when I actually ran the newly-built emacs (in ../src/),
> hooray!, I finally had an emacs on this otherwise naked machine.
>
> But it sure didn't look like the ntemacs I'm running on xp,
> with the large fancy colorful "script" EMACS it showed on
> starting up.
>
> No such luck.  What I got was like 30 years ago emacs running
> on an ADM-3a or vt-100: took no advantage of the gnome gui
> it was running under.
>
> Question: could that "no gif" do that?  (I hope not!)
>
> So, what might I have done wrong?
>
> ---
>
> I was executing it from terminal-window's tcsh command-line,
> rather than by clicking an icon.  SURELY that has nothing
> to do with it -- but do tell me if I'm wrong.
>
>
> Thanks for any advice!
>
>
> David

./configure generates a report near the end of its output that is
helpful for debugging this sort of stuff.  Autoconf probably should
include it in config.log too.  My config.log is 8442 lines, what's
another 33 lines among friends.

Here's the bit that I am talking about from my machine.

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
Configured for `i686-pc-linux-gnu'.

  Where should the build process find the source code?    
/home/jearl/projects/emacs
  What operating system and machine description files should Emacs use?
        `s/gnu-linux.h'
  What compiler should emacs be built with?               gcc -g -O2
  Should Emacs use the GNU version of malloc?             yes
      (Using Doug Lea's new malloc from the GNU C Library.)
  Should Emacs use a relocating allocator for buffers?    no
  Should Emacs use mmap(2) for buffer allocation?         no
  What window system should Emacs use?                    x11
  What toolkit should Emacs use?                          GTK
  Where do we find X Windows header files?                Standard dirs
  Where do we find X Windows libraries?                   Standard dirs
  Does Emacs use -lXaw3d?                                 no
  Does Emacs use -lXpm?                                   yes
  Does Emacs use -ljpeg?                                  yes
  Does Emacs use -ltiff?                                  yes
  Does Emacs use a gif library?                           yes -lgif
  Does Emacs use -lpng?                                   yes
  Does Emacs use -lrsvg-2?                                yes
  Does Emacs use imagemagick?                             yes
  Does Emacs use -lgpm?                                   no
  Does Emacs use -ldbus?                                  yes
  Does Emacs use -lgconf?                                 yes
  Does Emacs use -lselinux?                               no
  Does Emacs use -lgnutls?                                yes
  Does Emacs use -lxml2?                                  yes
  Does Emacs use -lfreetype?                              yes
  Does Emacs use -lm17n-flt?                              no
  Does Emacs use -lotf?                                   yes
  Does Emacs use -lxft?                                   yes
  Does Emacs use toolkit scroll bars?                     yes
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

The important bit, in this case, is not whether emacs is configured to
use a gif library, but rather that it is configured to use X Windows at
all.  As an example here's what I get when I configure emacs on a
machine without X installed:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
Configured for `i686-pc-linux-gnu'.

  Where should the build process find the source code?    
/home/jearl/projects/emacs
  What operating system and machine description files should Emacs use?
        `s/gnu-linux.h'
  What compiler should emacs be built with?               gcc -g -O2
  Should Emacs use the GNU version of malloc?             yes
      (Using Doug Lea's new malloc from the GNU C Library.)
  Should Emacs use a relocating allocator for buffers?    no
  Should Emacs use mmap(2) for buffer allocation?         no
  What window system should Emacs use?                    none
  What toolkit should Emacs use?                          none
  Where do we find X Windows header files?                NONE
  Where do we find X Windows libraries?                   NONE
  Does Emacs use -lXaw3d?                                 no
  Does Emacs use -lXpm?                                   no
  Does Emacs use -ljpeg?                                  no
  Does Emacs use -ltiff?                                  no
  Does Emacs use a gif library?                           no 
  Does Emacs use -lpng?                                   no
  Does Emacs use -lrsvg-2?                                no
  Does Emacs use imagemagick?                             no
  Does Emacs use -lgpm?                                   no
  Does Emacs use -ldbus?                                  no
  Does Emacs use -lgconf?                                 no
  Does Emacs use -lselinux?                               no
  Does Emacs use -lgnutls?                                no
  Does Emacs use -lxml2?                                  no
  Does Emacs use -lfreetype?                              no
  Does Emacs use -lm17n-flt?                              no
  Does Emacs use -lotf?                                   no
  Does Emacs use -lxft?                                   no
  Does Emacs use toolkit scroll bars?                     no
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

Of course, to get that output I had to do:

./configure --without-makeinfo --without-x

My guess is that somehow your emacs did not get built with X Windows
support.

Jason