Wireshark · Ethereal-dev: Re: [Ethereal-dev] Re-indenting the configure script (please test)

["Olivier Biot" <ethereal@xxxxxxxxxx>]

From: Stephen Samuel

| Quick query: Is glib required for building tethereal
| and the other text-based commands?

Definitely! GLib provides a powerful API to *lots* of convenient
utility functions (they tend to start with "g_"; you won't probably
find a single file *without* a GLib call :)

| I realize that,
| without X loaded, ethereal itself will never compile
| and I'm not expecting it to (disabled it in the config).

That's weird. Maybe it has to do with the PATH you have when working
in an X environment. I tend to open an X terminal and compile Ethereal
(or any other program) from that Terminal, and it is true, my PATH is
extended when using X.

Remember that the GUI application "ethereal" requires GLib (as do all
other binary files in the Ethereal project) *plus* GTK+ which is a GUI
library.

| As for editing the configure script vs. configure.in,
| uhm, oops... I should probably start there.  In any
| case, a critique of my auto-indentation script would
| still be welcome.

The problem is that the configure script itself is being generated by
computer. Normally you shouldn't bother looking at configure, unless
you're writing new autoconf macros and you'r testing the generated
configure script which exits somewhere at an unexpected location :)

As far as I understand the autotools, here's an attempt at explaining
some basic stuff:

Makefile.am ----> makefile.in
configure.in ----> configure
configure + Makefile.in ----> Makefile, config.h

Hope this helps.

Regards,

Olivier

| Joerg Mayer wrote:
| > On Mon, Mar 22, 2004 at 12:20:15AM -0800, Stephen Samuel (leave
the email alone) wrote:
| >
| >>I know that it has to do with insisting on testing the glib
| >>configureation (it'S *NOT THERE!), but trying to figure out
| >>the logic of the script is almost impossible
| >
| > OK, three things:
| > 1) You're a braver man than me, trying to understand the
| >    configure script.
| > 2) Being lazy, I only try to understand the configure.in
| >    file, from which configure is automagically generated
| >    by running the autoconf command.
| > 3) without having either glib or glib2 installed, Ethereal
| >    will neither build nor run: Some of the core data types
| >    Ethereal uses come from this lib. You do *not* need
| >    gtk (unless you want the graphical frontend), but glib(2)
| >    is required.