Lua on Ubuntu - again

[Juhász P. <pet...@gm...>]

Dear list,

today I've tried to compile gnuplot (the cvs version) on a fresh Ubuntu
10.10 install. Setting up the necessary packages was relatively
straightforward, but when I tried to compile, I've ran into a problem
with the lua terminal.

This issue is old (it's because Ubuntu calls the package "lua5.1"
instead of plain "lua" and this confuses the configure script), there is
already a notice about it in the INSTALL file. That notice says that one
has to set up a symlink for the package descriptor file:

ln -s /usr/lib/pkgconfig/lua5.1.pc  /usr/lib/pkgconfig/lua.pc

This used to be enough. However, the situation seemed to worsen since
that notice was added. If the above symlink is in place, configure finds
the package and enables the terminal. On the other hand, make fails,
because the linker wants "-llua", and there is no library found by that
name. Even an explicit "LUA_LIBS=-llua5.1" on configure's command line
won't persuade the linker to find the correct library. (Or more
precisely, the above assignment does insert the correct "-llua5.1" where
needed, but the incorrect "-llua" is still there and that makes the
linker choke.)

As a workaround, one may set up a symlink for the library as well:

ln -s /usr/lib/liblua5.1.so  /usr/lib/liblua.so

With this, the compilation goes smoothly. But fixing the configure/make
files would be a better solution.

An unrelated question:
Is there a policy for keeping the gnuplot_date string in version.c
current? Or it just gets bumped whenever there is a release?

Péter Juhász