Installing Perl and GCC on NFS - perl

We have 15 Solaris-10 (Dinosaurs, I know) zones, all of which have a few NFS-mounted file systems. In fact, I have been installing my Perl scripts there so that I need only edit once and it is updated for all 15 zones. We have an opportunity to install Perl-5.20 in a separate directory tree from the Perl-5.8 environment the users are [in their view] locked into. Similarly, they see themselves as locked into gcc 3.3.2, terrified to budge. We have an opportunity to install the latest gcc (including g++, of course) in a similarly alternative directory tree. I guess the idea would be to install the new gcc, then use that to configure and compile Perl.
The problem: Configuring the new Perl and gcc installations in a different directory tree from the default is kinda error-prone. (There are likely another non-default options as well.) To do the same non-standard installations 15 times is SO inviting a screw-up!
My solution (maybe): Install the newer Perl & gcc in a directory on an NFS-mounted file system, like my utilities. Those in the know (the DBAs mainly) would put that directory earlier in $PATH than /usr/local/bin. Those not in the know - said terrified users - would remain blissfully unaware of the much better tools under their noses and never the twain shall meet to be blamed for messing up the environment of the other.
Is this a realistic solution? Are there library dependencies within Perl and gcc that would rule out an NFS installation? Has anyone done this before? (Actually, I think they did this at one place I worked but the always messed the code in the process.)
Thanks much for help here.
-- JS

I recently built gcc 4.9 from source and used it to build Perl 5.18.2 on Solaris 10 on an NFS share without any problems. Our stack of cpan modules installed without issue, including DBD::Oracle.

Related

Swift toolchain location on Linux

I'm looking into running Swift on a Ubuntu 16.04 server. However I want to be certain about where I should install the toolchain.
From swift.org:
If you installed the Swift toolchain on Linux to a directory other than the system root, you will need to run the following command, using the actual path of your Swift installation...
Then from Kitura's Setting Up instructions:
After extracting the .tar.gz file, update your PATH environment variable so that it includes the extracted tools:
$ export PATH=<path to uncompressed tar contents>/usr/bin:$PATH
Where is the best place to install these type of things? In the past I would rely on apt-get or installation scripts provided by maintainers but this doesn't seem to be the case with Swift.
Are there any benefits or disadvantages to not installing it at the system root?
Note: This question borders on "best practices", which I believe is frowned upon here. I'm sorry about that; I've googled around and this seems to be something that people know implicitly. However, I don't yet and need some guidance
The versions of the software in your system root - in /usr/bin, /usr/share, /usr/lib, etc. - are carefully coordinated by the maintainers of your distribution to handle all reasonable dependencies. The maintainers also keep the software up-to-date with bug fixes.
When you need to install software that isn't supplied by your distribution, it's best to install it in a separate directory, such as /opt (in your case, one possibility is /opt/swift-3.1.1). This will avoid overwriting existing installed software (in your case, /usr/bin/lldb and /usr/lib/lldb) with something that's possibly incompatible with other software. And it will make it easy to uninstall (just rm -r /opt/swift-3.1.1 rather than having to get a list of files from the original tarball that are potentially strewn all over /usr).
There is some extra effort: you'll need to add /opt/swift-3.1.1/usr/bin to your PATH1. With some software, you'll need to add the directory containing dynamic library files to LD_LIBRARY_PATH. The software's installation instructions typically explains what you need to do.
[1]An alternative to changing PATH is to add a symlink to each new executable, in a directory that's already in your PATH. GNU Stow can help you do this.

How do I find what the Eclipse Cross Settings Prefix should be?

I have installed the latest version of Eclipse on my Windows 7 64-bit machine and the mingw compiler. In setting up a Hello World project, all goes well until I am asked for the Cross Settings what the Prefix is and the Path. The Path is obvious, it's the path to the compiler. However, I haven't the slightest idea what the Prefix is and Googling for much of the day hasn't enlightened me other than finding that a lot of other people have asked the question. Unfortunately the answers I've found appear to be for specific hardware. All I want to do is to produce an executable that will run on a Windows 32 bit or 64 bit machine.
So, what is the Prefix and how do I find what it should be?
What is probably happening here is that CDT is not locating your MingW or GCC installations.
simple - but unlikely reason - covering bases
There can be many reasons, from the simple - but unlikely at this point:
You don't have mingw installed
You don't have GCC installed
This can be tested easily by starting a shell and running gcc --version.
CDT heuristic not working
To more complicated reasons relating to your installation not being detected because the heuristic in CDT did not work on your machine. To find the correct settings, CDT will do:
Check $MINGW_HOME/bin for existence
Check <Eclipse install location>/mingw/bin for existence
Look for mingw32-gcc.exe or x86_64-w64-mingw32-gcc.exe on the PATH
Check C:\MinGW for existence
If CDT cannot find any of the above, you may lead to the situation you are in.
So, how to fix it!
Option 1
Start Eclipse from within a mingw set up shell. i.e. the one you can successfully run gcc --version from. That way Eclipse will inherit an environment that can launch GCC successfully.
Option 2
Set your environment up so that MINGW_HOME is properly defined. You can do this at the system level or within the build settings in Eclipse CDT. For example, on my machine in the build settings for the project (Right-click on the project, choose Properties, then choose C/C++ -> Environment) I have set:
MINGW_HOME to C:\MinGW
MSYS_HOME to C:\MinGW\msys\1.0
PATH to ${MINGW_HOME}\bin;${MSYS_HOME}\bin;<my normal path>
and this allows Eclipse to launch gcc as part of the build process.
NOTE The above setting were done automatically on my machine because mingw was correctly located by the heuristic.
Here is a screenshot of the build settings if it helps:
Prefix: Under the hood
To try and answer part of your original question about what Prefix is, I provide the below information. It is unlikely to be particularly helpf
Prefix, in GCC parlance, refers to the directory under which all the related GCC files are placed. With different prefixes you can have multiple GCC installed on your machine.
From the GCC FAQ:
It may be desirable to install multiple versions of the compiler on
the same system. This can be done by using different prefix paths at
configure time and a few symlinks.
The concept comes from autotools in general. Autotools is the standard GNU make system (where you do ./configure && make - simplified). The prefix is the command line option to the configure stage (--prefix) to specify where to install the tool to. GCC above uses the --prefix to allow multiple GCCs on your system.
If you really want to know more about this, read the autobook. The section on configuring covers --prefix:
‘--prefix=prefix’
The –prefix option is one of the most frequently
used. If generated ‘Makefile’s choose to observe the argument you pass
with this option, it is possible to entirely relocate the
architecture-independent portion of a package when it is installed.
For example, when installing a package like Emacs, the following
command line will cause the Emacs Lisp files to be installed in
‘/opt/gnu/share’:
$ ./configure --prefix=/opt/gnu
It is important to stress that this behavior is dependent on the generated files making use of this
information. For developers writing these files, Automake simplifies
this process a great deal. Automake is introduced in Introducing GNU
Automake.
Additionally, Mingw takes advantage of all this prefix options. Read more about that on mingw's site. But the short of it is that the main prefix for mingw is /mingw.

Is it safe to have various Perl installations on one machine share a cpan_home?

I have a dated system perl 5.8.8 on a Linux machine and installed a 5.12.4 from ActiveState. Both perl's cpan_home is ~root/.cpan. I was about to change the new perl's cpan_home, but then I realized I didn't know whether I really have to do this or whether it would just result in multiple copies of modules being downloaded to different directories when in fact they could be shared.
So can they? Is it safe? With regard to compiling? Or do I have to go for separate cpan_home directories?
Note that I tried perlbrew first but it failed with Can't load '../lib/auto/IO/IO.so' for module IO: ../lib/auto/IO/IO.so: wrong ELF class: ELFCLASS64 at ../lib/XSLoader.pm line 70. So instead of pursueing the issue I went for ActivePerl, which installs easily.
I have a dozen builds of Perl on my system, and they all use ~/.cpan. I have never had a problems, but I cannot say that it is safe. It depends on the settings therein. Specifically,
build_dir_reuse should (probably) be zero.
makepl_arg shouldn't contain INSTALL_BASE.
mbuildpl_arg shouldn't contain --install_base.
"Install base" overrides where the modules are installed. If you start installing the modules for all your builds in one location, you will have problems due to incompatibilities between versions, releases and builds of Perl.
If you want to share .cpan and have a local install directory, you can probably get away with using PREFIX=/home/username/perl5 LIB=/home/username/perl5/lib instead of INSTALL_BASE=/home/username/perl5. It uses a smarter directory structure.
By the way, local::lib causes "install base" to be used, so you'll run into problems if you use local::lib with multiple installs of Perl.

How can I install Perl's DBI on Mac OS X so Apache can find it?

I'm trying to setup a Perl development environment on my Mac laptop and have been having a really hard time getting it working. I thought I had everything configured correctly but when I try to run a sample script it is reporting errors with the DBI module and can't access the DB.
Here is what is reported in the Apache error logs:
[Fri Apr 30 23:11:33 2010] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] Can't locate DBI.pm in #INC (#INC contains: /Library/Perl/Updates/5.10.0/darwin-thread-multi-2level /Library/Perl/Updates/5.10.0 /System/Library/Perl/5.10.0/darwin-thread-multi-2level /System/Library/Perl/5.10.0 /Library/Perl/5.10.0/darwin-thread-multi-2level /Library/Perl/5.10.0 /Network/Library/Perl/5.10.0/darwin-thread-multi-2level /Network/Library/Perl/5.10.0 /Network/Library/Perl /System/Library/Perl/Extras/5.10.0/darwin-thread-multi-2level /System/Library/Perl/Extras/5.10.0 .) at main.pm line 5.
I downloaded and installed both modules manually to work with MAMP using the following commands as specified in this forum post:
For DBI
1. cd /Library/Perl/DBI-1.611
2. sudo Perl Makefile.PL
3. sudo make
4. sudo make install
For DBD
1. cd /Library/Perl/DBD-mysql-4.014
2. sudo Perl Makefile.PL --mysql_config=/Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysql_config
3. sudo make
4. sudo make install
What I noticed while running the above commands is that the files seems to be getting installed in the '/opt/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.9/darwin-2level/' directory which doesn't seem to be one of the search directories that Apache mentions in the error at the beginning of this post. Here is what I'm seeing during the install:
$ sudo make install
Files found in blib/arch: installing files in blib/lib into architecture dependent library tree
Installing /opt/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.9/darwin-2level/auto/DBI/DBI.bundle
Installing /opt/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.9/darwin-2level/auto/DBI/dbipport.h
Installing /opt/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.9/darwin-2level/auto/DBI/DBIXS.h
Installing /opt/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.9/darwin-2level/auto/DBI/dbixs_rev.h
Installing /opt/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.9/darwin-2level/auto/DBI/Driver.xst
Installing /opt/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.9/darwin-2level/auto/DBI/Driver_xst.h
Installing /opt/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.9/darwin-2level/DBI.pm
Installing /opt/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.9/darwin-2level/TASKS.pod
Installing /opt/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.9/darwin-2level/DBD/DBM.pm
Installing /opt/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.9/darwin-2level/DBD/File.pm
Installing /opt/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.9/darwin-2level/DBD/Gofer.pm
Installing /opt/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.9/darwin-2level/DBI/Changes.pm
Installing /opt/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.9/darwin-2level/DBI/DBD.pm
Installing /opt/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.9/darwin-2level/DBI/Profile.pm
Installing /opt/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.9/darwin-2level/DBI/ProxyServer.pm
Installing /opt/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.9/darwin-2level/DBI/PurePerl.pm
Installing /opt/local/share/man/man3/DBD::DBM.3pm
Installing /opt/local/share/man/man3/DBD::File.3pm
Installing /opt/local/share/man/man3/DBD::Gofer.3pm
Installing /opt/local/share/man/man3/DBI.3pm
Installing /opt/local/share/man/man3/DBI::DBD.3pm
Installing /opt/local/share/man/man3/DBI::Profile.3pm
Installing /opt/local/share/man/man3/DBI::ProxyServer.3pm
Installing /opt/local/share/man/man3/DBI::PurePerl.3pm
Installing /opt/local/share/man/man3/TASKS.3pm
Installing /opt/local/bin/dbiprof
Installing /opt/local/bin/dbiproxy
Writing /opt/local/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.8.9/darwin-2level/auto/DBI/.packlist
Appending installation info to /opt/local/lib/perl5/5.8.9/darwin-2level/perllocal.pod
My question is, what am I doing wrong and how can I either 1) Get Apache to look in the right directory where the DBD & DBI modules are installed or 2) Update the way I'm installing the module to install them into one of the search directories. I honestly don't know what option makes more sense and could use guidance on that as well.
As you can probably tell I'm pretty lost at the moment. Please help!!! Thanks in advance.
It looks like you've already installed another Perl via macports (/opt/local is where all macports installations go), and /opt/local/bin is earlier in your $PATH than the system Perl in /usr/bin. That's fine, if you are happy running Perl 5.8.9 rather than Perl 5.10.0 (hint: if you aren't sure of the differences, then the differences don't matter).
It's usually advised to not make extra installations to the system Perl. Apple may upgrade components through regular system updates, which could interfere with any modifications you have made, and if you make a mistake with an installation, it's difficult to remedy it without doing a full system reinstallation or having some serious understanding of the operating system guts. So, since you've already got another Perl installation ready, I would strongly encourage you to stick with that one.
However, you probably shouldn't be manually installing libraries if there is already a distribution available on macports. I used port search dbi and port search dbd to find them: the distributions are named p5-dbi and p5-dbd-mysql. You can install those like any other macports module: with sudo port install <distroname>. (You may need to install mod_perl itself, too.)
After that, you simply need to tell Apache/mod_perl to use that Perl installation rather than the system perl. I've never done that, so I can't advise on the best way to do it. However, quick searches on http://superuser.com suggest that the macports version of apache will run by default (via the same $PATH ordering), so I'd just Try It And See :).
Great answer, Ether. Having done this far too many times to count, I can give you a few pieces of advice:
Note: I am apparently limited to a single link in the post, so I had to remove all of my annotations. Thankfully, there is Delicious where I've stored them all with a stackoverflowmacports tag. Any place below where I removed a link to fit under Stack Overflow's ridiculous anti-spam measure, I've marked it with (*).
If having a reliably-working development environment at all times is important to you, rely on as LITTLE Mac OS X bundled software as possible. I love Apple but they have absolutely no qualms about breaking custom setups of their software as often as possible.
If #1 sounds like what you need to do, Macports is an EXCELLENT choice. I used to use Fink but they got left in the dust ages ago in terms of ease of use and spectrum of available software. The easiest route to installing macports is via the binary package install method (*)
As Ether mentions, when you have everything set up correctly, the Macports-provided MySQL, PHP and Apache all work together well without the system-installed analogs interfering. Most of that has to do with your PATH setting but all of those details are handled by the package installers post-flight script (*)
Once you're on the Macports train, it should become the very first place you look for any software. port search and port info are constant companions. They've got 6863 ports (*) currently which covers MOST of your bases.
When you do need to go outside of the Macports realm to find something, install it in /usr/local. That part of the file system hierarchy is yours to play with. Don't be lulled into a false sense of security and think that because Macports doesn't have what you're installing, it's okay to put it in /opt/local because invariably that software will install some dependency that will ALSO be a dependency for some piece of Macports software down the line and Macports will not allow a port to be installed if any one of its files would overwrite an existing file not managed by Macports (unless you force it which is always bad manners)
If you do any work with Perl and you use Macports' version, you will absolutely find yourself in a situation Macports doesn't have the one CPAN module you're looking for. (And, really, given that there are two and a half billion CPAN modules, who can blame them?). This will happen often enough that you will most likely tire of the manual installation method (*) (perl Makefile.PL; make; make test; sudo make install; cha; cha; cha) and long for the ease of use you've grown accustomed to with Macports.
If so, you can absolutely use the cpan (*) utility, CPANPLUS (*) or cpanminus (*) for all of your installing needs. Just make sure to make the necessary adjustments in the configuration of your tool of choice to instruct it to install your modules into /usr/local/lib/perl5, ignoring /opt/local/bin/perl's insistence that modules go into /opt/local/lib/perl5. You can set the PERL5LIB environment variable in your shell's init scripts to additionally look in /usr/local/lib/perl5 for modules. Just grab the #INC output from perl -V and tack it on the end...
And finally... Leveraging the system's daily init scripts or third-party software like Anacron (*) or MacPorts Notifier (*) (both available through MacPorts), make sure to update your software frequently. You don't have Mother Apple protecting you with Software Updates for the Macports installed software which have just as many bugs and security exploits as the very same software Apple bundles.
By updating frequently, you'll stay ahead of the baddies and by automating it, the upgrades will actually happen and you won't end up as I have in the past with a full weekend blown because you had a mountain of outdated ports to upgrade. Note: Macports stages its updates and if it fails at any point, your current version continues to work. Apple could learn a thing or two from them, I tell ya...
So, that's all I can think of a the moment. Hopefully the lessons above will get you going quickly and save all of the time, effort and stress I've experienced in past years in learning it. I would argue it's still far better than the alternative: Hating Apple because they break all of your nice things... :-)
I had a similar problem with Apache using the wrong Perl. I fixed it by appending the following lines to my httpd.conf file:
SetEnv PATH [colon-separated list of directories]
SetEnv PERL5LIB [colon-sep'd list of directories]
In my case, it looked like this:
SetEnv PATH /opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/mysql/bin:$PATH
SetEnv PERL5LIB /opt/local/lib:/usr/local/lib

What's the bare minimum Cygwin install to have DDD running properly on XP?

I’m using the gcc in MinGW that comes with Strawberry Perl, on Windows XP. I’d like to have ddd (the Data Display Debugger) as well but apparently on Windows the simplest way to get ddd is by running Cygwin. So what's the bare minimum of Cygwin I can install to get ddd up and running? I'd prefer if I could run ddd natively on Win32 but that doesn't seem to be an option.
As far as I can tell so far, only the following (with Cygwin DLL release version 1.5.25-15), and allowing setup to install any other packages to meet dependencies.
Base: base-files, grep
Develop: ddd, gdb
Math: gnuplot
Example to get grep working: Just drop the following files from a cygwin bin directory into an appropriate directory...
cyggcc_s-1.dll
cygiconv-2.dll
cygintl-8.dll
cygpcre-0.dll
cygwin1.dll
grep.exe
The Cygwin setup.exe installer resolves dependencies for you. Just run the installer, find and enable ddd, and click Next. It might install some packages you doun't strictly need, but figuring out which ones you can safely omit is probably a waste of time.
Disclaimer: I haven't tried this; I just install eveything.
If you're going for minimalism, you might want a smaller X server than cygwin-x11 (though it's what I use, and I'm quite fond of it). Starwin X-Win32 is actively maintained (though it costs $$ beyond the trial period), and avoids the overhead of installing Cygwin proper; there are other, zero-cost minimal X servers for win32 available, but I don't have linkage immediately available.
As the documentation at x.cygwin.com indicates, the xorg-x11-base package is the bare minimum needed.