Working on SunOS 5.5.1 w/o root, mostly.
Sarwat Khan (sarwat@interlog.com)
Sun, 30 May 1999 01:11:05 -0400
Well, it turned out that I had more time on the weekend than I
thought. I got AfterStep built with JPEG as well (more on that
later), but there's a couple problems. Here's exactly what I did,
from memory anyway.
1. Downloaded the distribution & unpacked it.
2. Edited the configure script so that line 3398 has quotes around
the vt_jpeg_libraries var.
3. Ran configure with the GNUstep dir as ~, the prefix to be
$HOME/Library/usr/local, and left the others as is (using PRE/bin,
PRE/share, PRE/man).
4. I ran make. There was a problem building the JPEG stuff.
Specifically in as_jpeg.c on line 181, METHODDEF (void), I had to
change it to just "void". gcc reported a parse error before void.
5. I copied all the binaries to ~/bin, and all the stuff in
afterstep/ to my Library/AfterStep directory.
6. I tried running Afterstep from the command line. I got the libXpm
problem again. I thought that since configure said it found it, it
wouldn't be a problem (I should be able to ignore the stuff in the
README.SOLARIS), but I was wrong. I added the path to my environment
variables and it successfully said that it couldn't open the display.
I was happy :)
7. I was logged in with a modem at the time. I started an X Server on
my local machine, set my display var in my telnet session, and ran
afterstep & xclock. I went out to buy some dinner, came back and
xclock was running with afterstep's look. Yay.
8. I was wondering why I didn't have a dock, then I went to my telnet
session and it said:
AfterStep: No such module <snip>/Library/usr/local/bin Animate
AfterStep: No such module <snip>/Library/usr/local/bin Wharf
9. I moved all the stuff except afterstep from ~/bin to
~/Library/usr/local/bin. Then Wharf worked.
10. I used the start menu to try and change the look, and the telnet
session said that it couldn't find the look file in
~/Library/usr/local/share/afterstep/looks/. Maybe more reading can
solve this, but shouldn't it be looking in my GNUstep-replacement
directory, ~/Library/AfterStep/looks? FYI, when I put one of the look
files from ~/L/AS/looks/ into ~/L/usr/local/share/as/looks/ it
worked. Would it be fine to just dump the rest of the looks file
there?
The only problem at this time is that it is looking in my
Library/AfterStep directory for the looks files, it's looking in
configure's datadir. Hopefully I can fix this without rebuilding and
changing configure's data dir. Will editing the base.*bpp files work?
So, to summarize problems & stuff:
- configure line 3398 needs to be edited as mentioned above.
- I'm not sure why the problem with as_jpeg.c exists, but it does. I
guess METHODDEF wasn't defined.
- It's obvious at this point that the FAQ is really out of date when
it comes to installing w/o being root. Here's some things that really
need to be changed: 1) It talks about making your own /bin, /etc, and
so on. That's really not needed. 2) It doesn't mention anything about
configure's options. Giving samples for configure's directory options
and what they mean (what will go in that directory) would be helpful.
Or just refer to another part of the FAQ that has that info. 3) I
didn't have to edit the base.*bpp files at all, since that was
handled by configure.
- I think the READMEs should explain the significance of the prefix
and data/bin dirs more. For example, when it explains the bindir, it
says "--bindir=DIR user executables in DIR". It would be nice if it
mentioned that user executables means modules and the like. Frankly,
before building, I didn't know I was going to end up with a bunch of
executable modules.
- I'm not sure why it's not looking in ~/Library/AfterStep/looks for
the looks files. Perhaps the install script is supposed to put those
into configure's data directory.
- There was that little problem with libXpm (when it originally
happened I didn't consider it a serious problem, since I had
configure all messed up anyway). The problem could just be me not
trusting the README.SOLARIS enough. Or maybe the readme could go into
more detail :P Like I said, since configure said it found it, I
thought libXpm wouldn't be a problem. I actually got the dir path for
libXpm from configure.log.
I don't have Helvetica, but nonetheless AfterStep seems pretty cool.
I'll have to try it out for real on Monday; using over a modem is
just too dumb in so many ways. If people can give me tips on how to
trim down the afterstep installation fat it would help. I figure I'll
run across some info anyway though.
Thanks all,
Sarwat.
--
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