I am downloading a bunch of software from sourceforge and it seems everything I try to compile comes up with TONS of errors. The one I find the most common is:
Include not found:
include <config.h>
Any ideas about this?
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Anonymous
-
2007-10-27
This is probably a file generated by the Linux configure script. Most open source code intended for Linux has a configure script that you are extended to call from the Linux shell. The typical sequence is:
./configure
make
make install
However, the bash shell script (configure) will make no sense to Windows. You may be able to execute teh sequence from MSYS which is a minimal shell for windows provided by www.mingw.org (You may in fact need all or MinGW). However some configurations use features or tools within Linux that are not part of MinGW and may require you to acquire additional tools. A heavyweight approach would be to use Cygwin - which is a more complete Linux emulation layer and environment for Windows.
Even if you get all the necessary build tools, the source code may still contain code that is not supported by Windows or easily ported to Windows(at least without resorting to Cygwin), such as fork().
In the end simply downloading source and expecting it to build is optimistic at best. You need to check the projects documentation and website for intended targets and build instructions for various configurations. Some may have special instructions for MinGW or VC++ builds.
Your best approach is to tell us exactly what it is you aretrying to build and you might get more specific help.
The path of least resistance is probably to use Linux - but that may not be exactly convenient for anything other than just building the code! ;-)
Clifford
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Clifford, thank you for taking the time to reply to my questions.
I have tried downloading several projects including Jikes, LAME and others. I really am trying to edit and recompile these for personal use. Make some changes to make them do what I need any nothing more. Things like that.
If you would like to refer to this comment somewhere else in this project, copy and paste the following link:
I am downloading a bunch of software from sourceforge and it seems everything I try to compile comes up with TONS of errors. The one I find the most common is:
Include not found:
include <config.h>
Any ideas about this?
This is probably a file generated by the Linux configure script. Most open source code intended for Linux has a configure script that you are extended to call from the Linux shell. The typical sequence is:
./configure
make
make install
However, the bash shell script (configure) will make no sense to Windows. You may be able to execute teh sequence from MSYS which is a minimal shell for windows provided by www.mingw.org (You may in fact need all or MinGW). However some configurations use features or tools within Linux that are not part of MinGW and may require you to acquire additional tools. A heavyweight approach would be to use Cygwin - which is a more complete Linux emulation layer and environment for Windows.
Even if you get all the necessary build tools, the source code may still contain code that is not supported by Windows or easily ported to Windows(at least without resorting to Cygwin), such as fork().
In the end simply downloading source and expecting it to build is optimistic at best. You need to check the projects documentation and website for intended targets and build instructions for various configurations. Some may have special instructions for MinGW or VC++ builds.
Your best approach is to tell us exactly what it is you aretrying to build and you might get more specific help.
The path of least resistance is probably to use Linux - but that may not be exactly convenient for anything other than just building the code! ;-)
Clifford
Clifford, thank you for taking the time to reply to my questions.
I have tried downloading several projects including Jikes, LAME and others. I really am trying to edit and recompile these for personal use. Make some changes to make them do what I need any nothing more. Things like that.