[Mono-dev] The Bleeding Edge of SuSE is not Mono-friendly

[Steven T. Hatton]

On Monday 22 August 2005 17:52, Miguel de Icaza wrote:
> Hello,
>
> > I've discovered that many of my problems with building and running Mono
> > were related to having the SuSE bleeding edge bits for Gnome installed. 
> > After the lattest rpms were uploaded to the ftp server (and installed
> > here) things really fell apart due to inconsistent Cairo version
> > dependencies.  I rolled back to the stock SuSE 9.3 bits and things are
> > going much better.
>
> This is probably caused by a non-perfect configure script and our own
> copy of Cairo.  We are working on a solution, but it might take a few
> weeks.

I can assure you there are (were as of yesterday) serious problems with the 
SuSE9.3 supplementary (use at your own peril) bits.  OTOH, I will observe 
that sorting out what's needed in order to build various Mono components is a 
bit challenging. 

For me there are many unfamiliar parameters to consider.  I've nothing against 
Gnome/Gtk, AAMOF, I had a hand in persuading sun Microsystems to back Gnome.  
Nonetheless, I've been a loyal KDE user for as long as the KDE has been 
useable.  Currently Gtk/Gnome are not playing nicely with Qt/KDE on SuSE 9.3+ 
(+ meaning the bleeding edge supplementary bits).  There are also many 
complications introduced by C#/CLI. For example, it's not clear how to 
determine or control which libraries and assemblies are visible, or being 
used by the currently running Mono or MCS.  That may simply be a matter of my 
needing to learn more about C# and CLI (which was my original objective, but 
MonoDevelp was locking up on me so...).

I found the comments about needed to install development packages if any of 
the build options were reported as "no" to be a bit nebulous.  A pointer 
suggesting the user have a look at the configure.in (or configure.in.in) as 
well as the bootstrap scripts might be helpful as part of the ./autogen.sh 
or ./bootstrap summary.

Another point of confusion is how the pkg-config system actually works.  I 
understand there are various directories called <path-to>/pkgconfig, and an 
associated PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable.  What is not clear is how 
the pkg-config system relates to the resolution of resource location during 
various parts of the build process.  For example, if I happen to have 
multiple versions of a particular package, how does the build system chose 
one over the other?  Is the pkg-config system involved?
-- 
Regards,
Steven