Further explanation on symlink
 

Hello, I looked at the manual for symlink which indicates the following:

SYMLINK(2) Linux Programmer's Manual SYMLINK(2)

NAME
symlink - make a new name for a file

SYNOPSIS
#include <unistd.h>

int symlink(const char *oldpath, const char *newpath);

I attempted the following:
#include <unistd.h>
int symlink (/usr/bin/scilab,/home/jnistler/scilab/scilab-3.1.1/bin/scilab);

and recieved the error below

bash: syntax error near unexpected token `('

I tried removing the '(' and

nistler@linux:~/scilab/scilab-3.1.1/bin> int symlink /usr/bin/scilab,/home/jnistler/scilab/scilab-3.1.1/bin/scilab;
bash: int: command not found

I am using Suse 10.0 on a 64 bit Athlon and working with a program called Scilab. I am having trouble with tk windows that another person has verified he is not having. I want to set up the symlink to see if this corrects the problem.

Thanks.

Munichtexan

From you post I understand you want create a symlink to run scilab from everywhere. To do this run (as root):

The reference that you listed is from the programmers guide, and is a snippet of C code, not a shell command. What you need to do is make sure that your paths are correct for the tk packages, and that you have all of the dependancies loaded. Are you running from a download directly from their site? Suse uses rpms, so installing scilab from a properly created rpm should resolve most of the dependancy issues. Try downloading from http://rpmforge.net/user/packages/scilab/. I haven't found a package specific to Suse 10 64 bit edition (or any other 64 bit rpm based distro for that matter), but someone may have built one.

I set up a mirror site in Europe which had an rpm setup and used YAST to install Scilab originally. What I do not know is if YAST looks at the version numbers associated with Scilab and upgrades now that I have it installed already. A colleague uses Debian on a 32 bit system and has no issue.

The link referring to Scilab-3.1.1 is a binary directly downloaded from the scilab.org site. Thanks.

Munichtexan

I looked at the SciLab site, and they do have the latest binary in a tar file. The real problem here is in dependencies. This is the one area that Linux needs to have a standardized packaging system (other than a tarball). I'm not sure how Debian resolves their dependancy issues.

What you could do is download the source tarball, extract it, and run (from the directory that it creates) "./conifgure". If it comes back ok, run "make", and "make install". That should at least let you know what libraries/dependancies it is missing.