OFFTOPIC Tarball / RPM conflict - Newbie

[F. Heitkamp]

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   Date: Sat, 20 Mar 1999 09:29:25 -0800 (PST)
   Sender: dbr@spoke.nols.com
   From: "David B. Rees" <dbr@spoke.nols.com>
   Cc: egcs@egcs.cygnus.com

   When installing tarballs on a RedHat system, it is best to install them under
   /usr/local, where they won't interfere with RPMS, which are never unstalled
   under there.  If you install egcs under /usr/local (the default, btw), it is
   simple enough to invoke the wanted egcs by prepending your path with
   /usr/local/bin.  Then the good egcs will be called when necessary.

(This may be a little much for a newbie, but I  thought I'd toss my two
cents.)

I'm not sure that fixes everything. There are still some other problems
to contend with IMHO.  Sometimes you need to have a link to the C pre-
processor in /lib, and a link to gcc-lib in /usr/lib.  Also if you are
using g++ you should have a link to g++ headers in /usr/include.  If you 
are not careful it's easy to end up using bits and pieces of different
compilers.  That's why I usually put new versions of egcs in there own
directory like /usr/egcs-1.1.2/ and  establish the various links to the
executables in  /usr/bin.  An additional benefit is if you find that a 
particular version does not seem to work well you can switch to another 
one.  Providing you didn't delete the master directory of course.

I really seems to depend on what you happen to compile.  If it's a
relatively simple program just needing gcc the /usr/local installation
and path setting may work fine.

This opinion is from years of Linux experience screwing things up ;)

YMMV

Fred
 

   -Dave

   On 20-Mar-99 James Green wrote:
   > 
   > I'm a newbie trying to get to grips with my RedHat 5.2 installation more
   > effectively. As I eventually want to know how properly use Unix/Linux in
   > the future, I am compiling software rather than using RPM files.
   > 
   > Unfortunately, as GNOME requires egcs, I d/led it without knowing that
   > it was already installed (albeit an older vers), compiled and installed
   > it. The problem is that the GNOME element which requires egcs doesn't
   > see it during configure, but my system can see it from the commend line.
   > Both GCC and egcs return the same version number.
   > 
   > There must be documentation for people with conflicting installations of
   > RPM and tarballs, but I cannot find any. I also can't help but feel this
   > is an a FAQ *somewhere*.
   > 
   > Could anyone help me out, or at least point me at the relevant docs?
   > I've searched the list archives without result.