Swarm RPMS (was Re: Need help installing swarm 2.0.1)

[Alex Lancaster]

>>>>> "JA" ==   <address@hidden> writes:

[...]

JA> 3. I tried to install these three files.  As you can see,
JA> swarm-hdf5 refuses to install because it needs egcs-objc:


JA> address@hidden dl]# rpm -ivh hdf5-1.2.0-1rh6.i386.rpm hdf5
JA> ################################################## address@hidden
JA> dl]# rpm -ivh swarm-hdf5-2.0.1-1.rh6.i386.rpm error: failed
JA> dependencies: egcs-objc is needed by swarm-hdf5-2.0.1-1.rh6
JA> address@hidden dl]# rpm -ivh swarmdemos-2.0.1-1.i386.rpm swarmdemos
JA> ##################################################

JA>    Isn't egcs-objc now _outdated_, given that egcs and gcc have
JA> merged?  Shouldn't installing gcc-objc-2.95.1 do the same thing?

When Red Hat themselves start including gcc-2.95 in their own
distributions, this egcs/gcc distinction will go away.  (I think the
new Beta distribution for RH 6.1 `Lorax' is using gcc-2.95, but I'm
not sure).

OK, to clarify the intent with the Swarm RPMS as they stand.  The idea
with RPMS is to make the most basic assumptions about the install
environment.  So I always take the stock Red Hat distribution and use
stock RPMS (i.e. Red Hat-maintained RPMS) to build against where
possible, and only distribute RPMS on the Swarm ftp site, which
*don't* come with the stock distribution.

Since you only gcc-2.95 for *building* Swarm, but not *using* Swarm
once it's installed, I only require the stock Red Hat egcs and
egcs-objc (the latter I explicitly require because egcs-objc is
normally ommited from a default RH 6.0 vanilla install).  The idea
here is to reduce the number of packages that the user needs to
install, or install from sources other than the RH 6.0 CD-ROM or ftp
site, and to reduce the number of RPMs we need to maintain.

Nowhere in the announcement for RPMS did I suggest that you needed to
use gcc-2.95 (although the Solaris packages require it, RH 6.0
doesn't).

If you want to use newer or non-standard (i.e. non-Red Hat) RPMs for
the Required RPMS, you can't necessarily assume that the stock RPMs
will work without some finessing.

Unfortunately it's not possible to predict what install environments
everybody will have when building RPMs (so many permutations), so I
try and adopt the conservative strategy and build against the most
common, baseline configuration which is a freshly installed RH system.

While I'm at it, I should also point out that the release number, as
well as the version of kaffe folks should install is important, you
need:

 kaffe-1.0.4b-2.i386.rpm

Thanks to Paul Johnson for pointing this out.

JA> 4. Since the swarmdemos seemed to install fine, I thought I would
JA> test one:

JA> address@hidden dl]$ heatbugs Segmentation fault (core dumped)

The core dump seems strange, since it should work against a system
without Swarm installed, can you send a backtrace?

$ gdb /usr/bin/heatbugs core

 --- Alex

-- 
  Alex Lancaster           |  e-mail: address@hidden
  Swarm Program            |     web: http://www.santafe.edu/~alex
  Santa Fe Institute       |     tel: +1-(505) 984-8800 (ext 242)
-------------------------------------------------------------------

                  ==================================
   Swarm-Support is for discussion of the technical details of the day
   to day usage of Swarm.  For list administration needs (esp.
   [un]subscribing), please send a message to <address@hidden>
   with "help" in the body of the message.