TeX 1995 July/TeX CD-ROM July 1995 (Disc 1)(Walnut Creek)(1995).ISO/tex-k/tex-k-archive.past/tex-k-archive.gz/tex-k-archive/[e-mail]_Tue Sep 20 18:46:07 1994.msg

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Subject: Re: problems with kpathsea
To: Ian James McKay <[e-mail]>
Date: Tue, 20 Sep 1994 21:37:05 (BST)
From: Timothy Murphy <[e-mail]>
Cc: [e-mail]
In-Reply-To: <[e-mail]> from "Ian James McKay" at Sep 20, 94 10:49:57 am
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>
> I have been trying to install the basic TeX distribution on a
> Sun SPARC (IPX) running SUNOS 4.1.2 with GNU make, bison, flex
> and gcc. The configure program seems to find the OpenWindows
> X11 includes and libraries with no problem, and I am unable to
> see anything wrong with the Makefiles. I have tried several
> times to apply the various patches to kpathsea so that the
> web2c distribution and the xdvik and dvipsk distributions
> match. It fails utterly to work, and craps out everytime it
> tries to compile the kpathsea material.

Worked perfectly for me.

> This is frustrating, since the original kpathsea that came
> with web2c worked fine. As well I was able to get dvipsk-5.55a
> to compile on its own, though it doesn't behave as advertised
> (for example MakeTeXPK fails completely, because it can't write
> to the ..../tmp directory, even though I gave the entire universe
> write permission there).

I think MakeTeXPK first writes the PK file in a temporary directory,
and then moves it (if it can) to its final resting place.

It's not quite clear which one it fell down on from your report.

> By the way, your documentation implies
> that the versions of kpathsea that come with dvipsk and xdvik
> are identical, but this can't be true -- try applying the
> kpathsea.ls-R.help patch to dvipsk-5.55a, and you'll find that
> db.c isn't even there, though it is in xdvik-1.8.

Seems to be in mine.
(I think there was a note that something was missing, temporarily.)

I checked the 2 directories with "diff -r",
and they were identical in my case.

> Here is the most recent of several sets of error messages for
> my attemps to make as per your instructions.
> gcc  -I. -I.  -I.. -I./..  -I/usr/openwin/include  -g -c dir.c
> ./kpathsea/dir.h:48: parse error before `*'

This looks as though configure got the wrote dirent/direct choice
just a few lines above.
You could try changing the definitions in c-auto.h

> Since you have solicited suggestions for improved documentation,
> let me suggest that you could start by being a little more
> explicit about what directories to run make in, and in particular
> what to do about compiling the whole mess together. If I knew what
> kpathsea was doing I would know whether it was safe to compile
> xdvik, dvipsk and web2c each with its own version of kpathsea,
> but I haven't got a clue whether that is a smart thing to do or not.

You can certain compile each quite separately from the others.
That's the simplest thing to do.

> I don't want to criticize because I can see the effort that you have
> put into this package, but really, it has cost me valuable time
> and shows no sign of being a 'comprehensive TeX archive'. It seems
> that good, well-tested code for xdvi, dvips and TeX has been complicated
> to the point of being uncompilable by having several different versions
> of kpathsea floating around. In contrast, even very large packages like
> the GNU emacs distribution have been virtually painless to install,
> only requiring reading of simple, step-by-step instructions, and some
> compile time. Still, my ignorance of the package could be entirely
> responsible for my problems now.

As I understand it, the versions of kpathsea in
dvipsk, xdvik and dviljk are always the same
(or intended to be).
So it should make absolutely no difference if you compile these
separately or together.
The kpathsea in web2c-6.1 is older than the others at present (and usually).
You have to apply the patch you mentioned if you want to use
the more recent kpathsea with web2c.
Incidentally, this patch is now out of date,
since the current versions of the 3 drivers (dvipsk-5.58a, dvik-18b)
have a new kpathsea in them.
I don't think a patch has yet been supplied for these.

However, you have the old drivers.
The patch worked ok for me ...