March 14, 2003
The subtleties of unix systems

(..and unix-like systems for the picky).

Can you spot the difference between the two? It cost me several hours of heavy searching as to why the hell postfix refuses to compile!

Line 1:


make -f Makefile.init makefiles 'CCARGS=-DHAS_MYSQL -I/usr/include/mysql' 'AUXLIBS=-L/usr/lib/mysql -lmysqlclient -lz -m'

Line 2:


make -f Makefile.init makefiles 'CCARGS=-DHAS_MYSQL -I/usr/include/mysql' 'AUXLIBS=-L/usr/lib/mysql -lmysqlclient -lz -lm'

This is the main problem with unix/linux/whatever *nix thingy you're using.. it's soo easy to make a little typo that will cause endless headaches as the errors returned are anything but pointing in the right direction.

Main issue I have: the first thing that comes to mind when something won't compile is incompatible libraries, missing libraries, gcc versions, etc.. who the heck thinks of a small typo at first?

Oh well. Moving on.

I should add.. while maybe on windows a small typo like this wouldn't be an issue.. there's a reason for that.. windows doesn't even give you the opportunity to mess up this way. Yay for linux.. the pain that it is sometimes.

Posted March 14, 2003 10:34 PM in Geek Stuff
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Comments
On March 14, 2003 11:04 PM Andrew added:

There are visual IDEs for use with Unix and Unix-like systems that can help people avoid this kind of problem....

I know that very few people use such things (especially on Linux, for some strange reason), but hey, it isn't like they don't exist. Such solutions seem oddly unattractive at times. (MacOS X's ProjectBuilder, on the other hand, can be easily grafted on top of existing Makefile based build systems, so that no re-setting up of the Makefile within the IDE is necessary.)

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On March 15, 2003 12:07 AM Steve Friedl added:

You've clearly never had to spend hours tracking down the same kinds of problems on a Win32 platform. There are more calling conventions and DLL linkages to contend with, and not everybody uses point-and-click IDEs for Windows development.

Unix has no such monopoly on this problem.

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On March 15, 2003 05:06 PM kevin added:

Me do:
rpm -iv postfix*

---Yea I'm not as cool as you, some day I will be... ;)..... Compling jolts me with fear.....RPMs are for wimps and I'm a ...eh...wimp....lol

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On March 15, 2003 09:07 PM Apokalyptik added:

Its funny too... those errors are the kind of thing that lead you on 4 hour wild goose chases while you try and figure out why {X} isnt functioning --quite-- as it should... and you check everything 3 times... finally you just remove and recompile it and it works... you kick yourself in the rear and call it a night...

such is the life of a unix junkie...

i guess, all things being equal, its like a bad trip for a drug junkie

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