Re: Question about compiling...

[Bob Proulx]

Jeremy Buseman wrote:
> I'm having difficulty compiling Coreutils on my i686-linux-gnu system.
> It gives me parse errors with sysctl.h and in the configure it says that
> sysctl.h is not usable.

Thanks for your report.

> Some of the prerequisite headers are not present also, such as
> fstyp.h fs_types.h s5param.h filsys.h systeminfo.h hurd.h and
> mnttab.h.

Oh gosh, some of those headers such as filsys.h I have not seen since
UNIX V7 days.  Brings back the memories.  :-)

> What package am I missing that should have installed these headers
> or what could possibly be going wrong?

You should not need any of those files that you mentioned.  What is
probably confusing you is that the configure script is probing your
system for various features.  Those header files are found on other
systems, such as the old V7 system I mentioned.  You won't have every
header file of every system in the world, you wouldn't want to.  Some
of those are from obsolete interfaces.  So most people today normally
see that they do not have those files.

> If more info is needed please reply with the requirements and I'll
> send everything I can.

Could you post some more information about your system?  First off, is
this a from scratch built system or from a distribution?  What version
of coreutils are you trying to build?  What compiler are you using?
Could you post the relevant portions of the configure output that are
failing around sysctl.h?

Usually /usr/include/sys/sysctl.h just turns right around and includes
/usr/include/linux/sysctl.h which is a kernel header.  Which means we
are entering territory which can be quite different on different
systems.  One school of thought is that that /usr/include/linux is a
symlink into your kernel source at /usr/src/linux.  If so then it all
depends on what you have unpacked there.  Another school of thought is
that the kernel provides an API that won't change from minor rev to
minor rev.  In that school those files are real files not directly
associated with the kernel and would therefore be real files from a
package.  I prefer this way of thinking about the system.  These files
in this case would usually be grouped with a libc development library
like libc-dev or glibc-devel or some such.  Everybody names them
differently.

If I had to guess way out in the dark with just the little information
so far I would guess sysctl.h is including your unpacked kernel by the
first school of thought and that your installed gcc and your kernel
are not happy with each other.  But at this point it could be anything
so I reserve the right to change my opinion later.  :-)

Note that the latest version is available here:

  http://ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/coreutils/

Bob