Welcome

By TimSchutte (Fearless Moderator), on Sat Feb 26 19:59:18 2005: Welcome.

Welcome to the adesklets "Installation Problems" forum.

My name is Tim Schutte, and Sylvain, the creator of adesklets, has asked me to moderate the forums.

I am not a programmer--I will gladly leave that task up to Sylvain--but I am a long-time Linux user; my first distribution was Redhat 5.1 on an Intel Pentium 100 with 64MB of RAM in 1998, and I am presently using an Athlon 1800XP with 256MB of RAM running Mandrake 10.1. Thanks to programmers like Sylvain, our favorite operating system has become much friendlier, easier to use and more visually attractive.

Feel free to ask any questions you may have about installing adesklets. Make sure you read all of the documentation. Sylvain has done a great deal of work on the docs, so make use of them.

Make sure you have all the required dependencies. I had to download a newer version of the gcc compiler and several other bits and pieces of code before adesklets would even compile.

Good luck, and ask away!
Tim

Thanks,
Tim

By TimSchutte (Fearless Moderator), on Thu May 26 09:15:29 2005: Installation on Mandrake/Mandriva.

Hi All,

Installing adesklets (twice) on Mandrake/Mandriva systems can be an adventure. The first time I tried on my own box, Sylvain kindly spent an entire Saturday afternoon poking and prodding around trying to get them to work. Finally, after installing libraries from source into their default locations--instead of where Mandrake put them--got adesklets working.

Well, last week I installed a shiny, new 120GB hard disk on my system and, in the process of transferring the old system onto the new disk, I deleted the partitions I was trying to copy! So much for 'gui tools', it's the command line for me next time. After re-installing and updating all the packages, I downloaded the latest version of adesklets and dove in.

Well, ./configure stopped with an error. I examined the messages, and determined that the programs required to compile software--including a functional C++ compiler--are not part of the default Mandrake 10.1 installation! I couldn't even download a compiler from source and install it--I was chasing my tail. Then I remembered a cool website:

http://easyurpmi.zarb.org

and cooker, the source for the very latest, cutting-edge software in RPM format. Following the instructions, I set up urpmi to download the latest compilers, and success! Adesklets installed without a whimper.

So, if you use Mandrake/Mandriva Linux and are having a problem compiling software, be advised that the authors of the distribution have assumed that you are a beginner and do not include the software required to build from source in their default installation. Do as I did, and you should be fine.

Later--
Tim

By syfou (Core Developer & Desklet Author), on Thu May 26 14:21:16 2005.

Just a small addendum to what Tim said: adesklets doesn't require a C++ compiler, but a plain old C compiler, as specified in the documentation; of course, that's not a big issue for most people, since they will most probably use prepackaged version of gcc, which will come with both a C and C++ compiler.

By TimSchutte (Fearless Moderator), on Thu May 26 16:59:27 2005.

syfou wrote:

P.S.S.: Make sure it is the very latest gcc you can get. The version shipped with Mandrake 10.1 was broken in that it could only compile pre-packaged RPMs. That is where I got into trouble.

Thanks,
Tim

By syfou (Core Developer & Desklet Author), on Thu May 26 17:11:08 2005.

Generally speaking, it is important to have a toolchain (compiler, linker, libraries) that matches your system for any source build, and installing latest available pre-packaged version of the compiler is certainly the easiest way to ensure this on many binary-based linux distribution. This said, I know adesklets 0.4.8 to compile on the C compiler of gcc 2.7.1 (released in late 1995). :-)