Hi
... may be something about this should be added to FAQ ?
Good idea. Perhaps the following:
Why shouldn't I just grab and install a binary? =================================
Linux may be Linux, but many details are left up to the implementor. If that isn't enough updating a seemingly unrelated piece of software can cause compatibility problems. Witness this exchange from the mailing list:
>>I'm not an expert on this, but I remember that I installed on my Linux >>(RedHat 6.1) two RPM packages: >> >> gpc-19990118-1.i386.rpm >> gpc-extras-19990118-1.i386.rpm > I have install all but it doesn't run anyway! > My Linux is mandrake 7.0, it is maybe the problem?...
Mandrake is NOT compatible with RedHat despite claims - you need less manual tweaks then in case with SuSE or Debian but ONLY RedHat is compatible with RedHat (even in this case only if you are lucky enough - see below). ESPECIALLY for GPC: Mandrake traditionally using very "advanced" (read: barely working) versions of gcc and gpc relies HEAVILY on gcc.
If you DO NOT have RPM for EXACTLY your distribution then better (=easier) to recompile GPC from sources. And when I'm saying EXACTLY I mean exactly: RPM for RedHat 5.0 WILL NOT work in RedHat 5.2, RPM for RedHat 6.0 WILL NOT work in RedHat 6.2, etc. In some cases even "RedHat x.y" can be incompatible with "RedHat x.y with updates" :-(( Usually it can be easily tracked down and fixed by knowledgeable person (almost any package for any distribution can be forced to work in almost any other distribution) but just "rpm -Uvh" quite often will not work. When you are compiling program from sources autoconf usually can find and compensate most differences automagically but rpm/dpkg/apt is NOT sophisticated enough. That's why we recommend to start from sources when binaries do not work for you.
Russ russwhit@mind.net