Methods of determining dependencies ?

[sling-shot]

There are 4 things to be considered in packaging.
Depends and Provides.
Build time and Run time.

Other than any documentation on their website I have understood the following methods:
1. Readme / Install / Instructions etc text files that come with the source.
2. For Qt software, .pro .pri files.
3. make file ?

I am at a loss further. Kindly help.

[TerryN]

Other than any documentation on their website I have understood the following methods:
1. Readme / Install / Instructions etc text files that come with the source.
2. For Qt software, .pro .pri files.
3. make file ?
I am at a loss further. Kindly help.

If the source is a GNU automake project the configure script will check and report any missing dependencies.  You can also run the configure script with --help to get a list of any "optional" features/dependencies which are available.  For cmake projects the cmake command checks and reports any missing dependencies.

Terry.

[ghostbunny]

just to add three more sometimes you have imake or scons or waf, can't remember whether there was a special file for imake but the rest has own files. but this types appear very seldom.

[gseaman]

After you've read the documentation on the website for installing, then looked at a couple of existing spec files, looked at ./configure --help, then you build it and watch for errors. This is no big deal for small programs that build really fast.

Galen

[sling-shot]

I see one problem with using existing .spec files - They may be outdated.

The library versions they refer to may be need to be updated. (learnt from my FirstEffort and more recent BueDevil)

Older requirements may no longer be needed.

How to know these things? Is it written somewhere inside the source code?

[gseaman]

If the dependencies have changed, it is usually documented. Most of the time, it will also not build and generate an error. Then you google, ask on the forum, and occasionally you may have to ask the original developer for assistance.

Galen

[tele]

1. If the dependency is not used it will not be an error.
  Best way

Posted by: gseaman
After you've read the documentation on the website for installing, then looked at a couple of existing spec files,

But this we can have without documentation, I'm looking for this too.

About make file, and ./configure
I can't find command or ways how print all dependencies from make or ./configure. , maybe exist, I do not know.
When I use ./configure I see all in output from terminal, but not all code source have file ./configure.
./configure was written  developer source code, so part of dependencies can have other name in different Linux distributions.
We can create Dictionary of packages and libraries for pclinux when we looking for dependencies,
some packages have name's ... -devel, but not all.
Sometimes dependencies are created in or when make file run, I can only open files from code source to text editor and look,
but look at the code and run make with debug mode it is not comfortable.


Other way is debug, but this working after build rpm and
ldd - but I thing this print only shared library dependencies  
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-reference/ch12.en.html#_check_dependency_on_libraries
, like:

Code: [Select]

$ ldd /bin/ls
linux-gate.so.1 =>  (0xffffe000)
librt.so.1 => /lib/i686/librt.so.1 (0xb787b000)
libcap.so.2 => /lib/libcap.so.2 (0xb7876000)
libacl.so.1 => /lib/libacl.so.1 (0xb786e000)
libc.so.6 => /lib/i686/libc.so.6 (0xb7706000)
libpthread.so.0 => /lib/i686/libpthread.so.0 (0xb76ec000)
/lib/ld-linux.so.2 (0xb78b0000)
libattr.so.1 => /lib/libattr.so.1 (0xb76e6000)
And now I can search this, like:
apt-cache searchfile name_of_lib

Code: [Select]

$ apt-cache searchfile linux-gate
$
So nothing, not always ldd work as I want, I can search in web , what it is
http://www.trilithium.com/johan/2005/08/linux-gate/
but not this way I 'm looking

If this will exist, I can check to see if I have installed package with this lib
rpm -qa | grep name_of_package

TerryN once wrote about ldd and rpm -q in:
http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,101266.msg905539.html#msg905539

It looks interesting also "tracing program activities" but It also has limitations and this is not comfortable
http://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/debian-reference/ch09.en.html#_tracing_program_activities

$ strace ls
execve("/bin/ls", ["ls"], [/* 88 vars */]) = 0
brk(0)                                  = 0x93b1000
mmap2(NULL, 4096, PROT_READ|PROT_WRITE, MAP_PRIVATE|MAP_ANONYMOUS, -1, 0) = 0xb774b000
access("/etc/ld.so.preload", R_OK)      = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
open("/etc/ld.so.cache", O_RDONLY)      = 3
fstat64(3, {st_mode=S_IFREG|0644, st_size=177577, ...}) = 0
mmap2(NULL, 177577, PROT_READ, MAP_PRIVATE, 3, 0) = 0xb7705000
close(3)                                = 0
open("/lib/i686/librt.so.1", O_RDONLY)  = 3
......

________
If I wrote something wrong, please correct me.

[kjpetrie]

Search in Synaptic for "Provided Packages" rather than name. If a package has a different name in pclos it should have a Provides: line in its .spec file giving the usual name for the package so it can be installed as a dependency.