Kdevelop Install error - please install Berkeley DB
 

I am a complete linux newbie and I have installed Mandriva 2007 free on one of my spare PCs. I am trying to install Kdevelop on the kde desktop but I keep getting an error saying i need to install berkeley db although i have already installed this in usr/bin folder. Please can someone try to suggest where I am going wrong. I downloaded the latest kdevelop in bz2 format and unzipped it in konsole as su. I then ran ./configure and at first I got the error that i need to install flex which i did and that seemed to clear that issue but i can't clear this berkeley db issue.

It sounds like you are trying to install kdevelop from source code.

While there is nothing wrong with this, it itn't the easiest option as there is nothing to handle installation dependencies for you.

If all you want is to use kdevelop on your system, then the simplest solution is to use urpmi (urpmi) to do the download and install for you, along with any dependencies. Just running should be enough to install it.

If you do want to install from source, to better configure it to your system or to develop kdevelop itself, then you will need to tell it where the berkeley db library is. You haven't posted the output of your configure script.

First of all, delete the files that you unpacked as the root user (under su) and unpack them again as a regular user. You never need to compile software as the root user, who is only needed to install software and otherwise configure the operating system, and trying to compile software as root may cause security problems.

If memory serves, berkely db is a library (a .so.* file), not an executable binary, so hopefully you will find it in /usr/lib/, with development (header) files somewhere under /usr/include/, rather than /usr/bin/

Run the configure script with ./configure --help. This will give you a list of options that you can pass to the configure script. You can probably pass something like --with-berkely-db=/usr/lib/berkely-db-1.0.so or something similar. You should also make sure that the berkely db libaray's development files are included, or you won't be able to compile programs (like kdevelop) against them; this should help:
NB: I haven't used urpmi myself (not a Mandriva user), so I would look for instructions on that if you are having problems setting it up. Also, I haven't checked the names of the packages above (kdevelop, berkely-db-devel) so you might want to check these with:Hope that helps,

—Robert J Lee

many thanks
 

thanks Robert

I am busy downloading the packages using urpmi although i am using dial up so it will take some time (188 Mb in total).

I will let you know if everything goes well else I will pick your brains further if not succesful (if you are willing of course)

Working
 

Everything is installed and working. Many thanks omce again. I can see this is going to be a steep learning curve !!!