[Xastir] snag trying to install shapelib via source onto mac os X 10.5

[Tom Russo]

On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 05:43:27PM -0500, we recorded a bogon-computron collision of the <kg4wsv at gmail.com> flavor, containing:
> On Fri, Sep 17, 2010 at 11:28 AM, T Wegner <towegn at tds.net> wrote:
> > so I take it this means it's a file instead of a directory. Let me be
> > perfectly honest here . . . I have no idea what I'm doing. lol
> >
> > Should I delete the lib file and make a lib directory here?
> 
> You'll have to, before lots of stuff will install correctly.

> > Is there something in that lib file of importance and I should not delete?
> 
> That's the $64k question.  I'd just rename it, then continue with the
> build process (a "make install" will most likely create /usr/local/lib
> correctly for you).

>From an earlier email, there was a description of how libshp.a was *copied*
to /usr/local/lib right before the attempted ranlib, but before /usr/local/lib
was created.  I don't know what instructions Tom was following, but they're
not the instructions from Xastir's INSTALL document (which tell one to run
"make lib_install" in Shapelib's directory), but rather some platform-specific
instructions from elsewhere.  At any rate, libshp.a was simply "cp"'d into 
place, not "installed."  

(BTW, Tom's note in which he shows the sudo log with a "cp" is:

http://www.mail-archive.com/xastir@lists.xastir.org/msg04153.html
)

Thus, there is a huge probability that the file /usr/local/lib
is nothing more than the contents of libshp.a.  Try running diff on the 
/usr/local/lib file and the libshp.a that was supposed to have been installed
there.  I betcha dollars to donuts it simply prints nothing, indicating that
the files are identical.  Another clue would be that libshp.a in the shapelib
sources has the same size as /usr/local/lib.

Renaming /usr/local/lib and then doing an mkdir /usr/local/lib is a prudent
step that avoids deleting something permanently, but probably unnecessary 
since it is almost certainly the case that /usr/local/lib (the plain file) is 
just a copy of libshp.a.  Removing it and then doing an mkdir (with appropriate
chmod to get permissions right) will almost certainly be correct.

-- 
Tom Russo    KM5VY   SAR502   DM64ux          http://www.swcp.com/~russo/
Tijeras, NM  QRPL#1592 K2#398  SOC#236        http://kevan.org/brain.cgi?DDTNM
 "The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off."