install

[John Ramsay_2]

I pointed the ./configure at gcc and compiled and did make with no errors. Now when I do a make install I get:
installing libtcl8.0.a
Make: Cannot load ./install-sh. Stop.
**Error exit code 1
Stop.

The file install-sh is there so I'm not sure what I need to do.

[Steven E. Protter]

Try it again after using the set -x command.

You will get verbose response codes. Maybe. It depends how the script is written.

SEP

[John Ramsay_2]

I downloaded gentoo from the utah site thinking it would be usable under HPUX 11.00. I did a make just like the install note said and it wouldn't work. I'm completly confused. In all these years this is the best install practice for unix? I expected this for linux but I'm surprised unix is the same way. No wonder MSWindows is so popular.

[Bill Hassell]

The quality of an install procedure is totally up to the writer of the package. Just as there is awful code, there are equally (sometimes worse) bad makefiles. A clean makefile that runs on multiple versions of Unix requires careful coding and testing. HP-UX has a tool called software distributor that enforces numerous installation and packaging rules so it is much more difficult to create a bad install package. But there is no reason to assume that freeware for a commercial version of Unix has any better installation procedures. And as many sysadmins can confirm, even very expensive application packages have pitiful installation procedures, full of errors and security problems.

But that is not Unix, that is scripting and makefile authoring. A bad DOS script is just as easy to write as a bad shell script. MS Windows has several installation methods, none of which prevent clobbering system files. In fact, MS installation standards have long recommended dumping every DLL file into the same opsystem directory with no protection between applications that accidently pick the same name. Installtion features are certainly not a criteria for choosing Windows over Unix.

So just like any package that fails to perform as documented, the fix is to contact the author or manufacturer and see if they ever bothered to test the package on your hardware/software combination. The vast majority of packages at the Liverpool porting center (http://hpux.connect.org.uk/) install without difficulties and use swinstall.

[T G Manikandan]

Did you get gcc from the hp utah site.

Did you check the dependencies?
It also requires GNU make which is avaliable there.

Also check the installation notes for building up the gcc.

that should help.