[Xastir] map levels don't work

[Curt Mills]

On Tue, 9 Nov 2004, Byron Smith wrote:

> There are sooooo many unknown (or non apparent) libraries and dependances
> needed for each bell and whistle compile feature.

Note you said "bell and whistle ... feature".  For the standard
Xastir without all the optional features, which is still very
capable (even map-wise), the list of extra libs and such is actually
fairly short.


> My first attempt to assembling Xastir was a failure (no surprise there,
> heh?). I didn't know what I needed to be present *before* I started.  It
> was only after retrying many times, passing the list of "the assembler
> didn't find ..."  statements onto Linux Elmers did I learn just what some
> of what is needed.  I gave up after chasing dependency issues and finally
> reloaded my RH box with every RPM package that was on the three CDs in a
> last ditch effort to "cover all the bases". That did the trick - 4 GB worth
> though.
>
> What would be *super cool* is to develop a list of " you need to load these
> other dependances along with XXXXX to make it work" list - libs,
> development packages etc, for each optional compile item.

Try developing an app that is truly cross-platform sometime, and
where one of the targeted platforms is Linux in all it's many
variants, and you'll soon be in the same boat.

Once you get a somewhat standard _development_ environment on your
box you can compile quite a few different apps without having to do
something special.  The trick is to get that development system
setup.  The standard out-of-the-box Linux install doesn't load the
development headers and tools.


> This kind of information shouldn't be kept secret. I really believe this is
> one of the major
> reasons that many give up on Linux - these learning curves are actually
> vertical cliffs without a next door Linux guru at a beckon call.
>
> Come on guys - lets not keep this a secret any longer.

Funny.  It's not that it's a secret.  It's that various
distributions install various things, so you need to install
_different_ extra things for each Linux distribution, and
enumerating all the possibilities across all the possible operating
systems we run on would be a nightmare, and would be forever out of
data as new versions come out.

You're better off learning about your particular
Linux/FreeBSD/Solaris/MacOSX/Windows-Cygwin system and what you in
particular need to install in order to actually have a reasonable
build environment.  Repeat as necessary as each upgrade to your OS
comes out.

To be fair, the Xastir configuration/install has made great strides
in the last five years.  It used to be a REAL nightmare to install,
requiring hand-editing of Makefiles and such.  Now it learns
everything it needs to know about your system quite easily through
the standard "./configure" script.  Yea, adding additional map
libraries and such can be a pain at times, but there are written
instructions that take you through it step-by-step, and there _are_
elmers on the mailing lists that are ever-present and ready to help.
Like me!

-- 
Curt, WE7U.				archer at eskimo dot com
http://www.eskimo.com/~archer
  Lotto:  A tax on people who are bad at math. - unknown
Windows:  Microsoft's tax on computer illiterates. - WE7U.
The world DOES revolve around me:  I picked the coordinate system!"