Subject: FVWM: installation problem

From: Jesse L Farinacci <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Sep 2003 15:16:49 -0400

hello all--having a bit of installation problem.  i am working from the
unstable branch, 2.5.7, i'm a university student on a system that does
not stay as up to date with fvwm as i would like, so i'm forced to
build my own.  i have a working libpng installed at: $HOME/bin/libpng/*
(using $HOME/bin as my prefix is just a habit i started a year or two
ago and i've got so many dependencies there i'd prefer not to break
it).  here is a relevant snip from my shell, it seems to be breaking on
the png support checking..ugh.

-jesse

% cat fvwm-options
--prefix $HOME/bin/fvwm  --disable-bidi --disable-xft \
--without-gnome  --disable-nls  --disable-xinerama \
--without-stroke  --with-png-library=$HOME/bin/libpng/lib \
--with-png-includes=$HOME/bin/libpng/include --disable-xrender
% ./configure `cat fvwm-options`
[...]
checking for Xpm 3.4g or better... yes
configure: error: argument must be boolean
./configure: exit: bad non-numeric arg `file'
./configure: exit: bad non-numeric arg `file'
%

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---

From: "S. Anderson" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 2 Sep 2003 23:42:30 -0600

> ./configure: exit: bad non-numeric arg `file'

I had a look in the ./configure file for you, it seems that
--with-png-library only takes "yes" or "no" as an argument...

hth,
sa
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---

From: Mikhael Goikhman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 12:47:30 +0300

> --with-png-library only takes "yes" or "no" as an argument...

No, like any --with-XXX-library, it takes any of these (see acinclude.m4):

dnl     * boolean (no, yes or blank): whether to use library or not
dnl     * file: assumed to be the name of the library
dnl     * directory: assumed to *contain* the library

It seems like there is simply no such directory $HOME/bin/libpng/lib.

The error message is misleading, because of a new autoconf behaviour,
I will fix it. The fixed error message will be:

configure: error: --with-png-library argument must be yes/no, file or directory

Regards,
Mikhael.

---

From: Jesse L Farinacci <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 10:48:10 -0400

> It seems like there is simply no such directory $HOME/bin/libpng/lib.

hello, i have verified that this is in fact a directory.  i've even gone
so far as to rebuild the libpng libraries and performed its own set of
diagnostics.  everything appears to be behaving AOK.  is there some way
for me to give more information that would be helpful?  please let me
know.  ..i miss my fvwm..

-jlf

---

From: Dominik Vogt <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 17:01:39 +0200

> for me to give more information that would be helpful?  please let me

Take a look at the config.log file generated by ./configure.  See
where it tried to detect libpng.  The messages there may help you
solve the problem.  If not, post the file to the mailing list.

Ciao

Dominik ^_^  ^_^

---

From: Mikhael Goikhman <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 19:00:04 +0300

> solve the problem.  If not, post the file to the mailing list.

The error message indicates it does not come to the png detection, it
fails on the --with-png-library argument parsing, i.e. it is neither
"yes", "no", existing file nor existing directory.

checking for Xpm 3.4g or better... yes
configure: error: argument must be boolean[, file, or directory]

Jesse, if you want fvwm back, recheck this directory and command line,
because I can only reproduce this error when there is no such directory.
Otherwise, if there is such directory configure should not abort, even
if this directory is empty.

There are several other ways to tell the configure about the non standard
library and include directories, like setting LDFLAGS and CPPFLAGS before
running configure (run it with --help).

Regards,
Mikhael.

---

From: Jesse L Farinacci <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 3 Sep 2003 13:41:12 -0400

> "yes", "no", existing file nor existing directory.

hello, i have successfully gotten past this hurdle; Mikhael,
you were quite correct in that the directory did not exist.
by prepending the = sign to the directory, it does not
interpolate the $HOME variable..  blah blah blah.  i fixed
this by using a fully qualified path.  thanks for the help!

-jesse