So I go to download/gunzip/untar/compile the extension packs for Blackbox , and the configure script stopped dead in it's tracks saying it couldn't find the X header files.

I checked in /usr/include, and sure enough, no X11 folder. I checked my Slackware drive, and it has a softlink /usr/include/X11 -> /usr/X11R6/include/X11. So I put that in Mandriva's /usr/include, and tried it again with the same error. I check the folder - and it has nothing but pixmaps/bitmaps in it, no include files!

So, are they hidden somewhere else, or do I have to download them? Where can I get them free? (Mandriva page I found charges for them.)

For that matter, I seem to be missing GTK and SDL headers, too. I have all the libraries, because I've run proggies in Mandriva which use those libraries, without a hitch. Just can't compile more of the same.

EDIT: I just checked things on my Slackware drive, and an SDL and an X11 program compiled without a hitch. Now these two drives live on the same computer, and it's been slow going getting each system to access the other's drive. I keep running into permission problems left and right, but I'm working them out one by one. Anyway, I found X11.h and all it's friends on the Slack system.

My question now: could I simply softlink from one drive to the library files of the other? Or could I copy Slackware's headers over to Mandriva's drive? My main concern is breaking something with incompatabilities, and make and configure being so doggone *picky*...

Let me get this straight: you have been able to *run precompiled* programs that depend on SDL/X/..., but not compile them yourself.

That sounds like a classic case of the .so being in one package and the .h in another.

In debian, the .h-packages are called developer- (or just -dev)-packages; I would suspect they're called something similar in your distro.

Install them. All the worlds problems should now be solved

hth --Jonas

thanks, anyway, jonas, but I don't think Debian advice is likely to help with this Mandriva question.

I have groveled through all three free disks of the Mandriva install - no X11-devel anything to be found. Ditto any other package containing header files.

They're all present on both my Fedora and Slackware installs, so I'm going to try to port the headers to Mandriva, or download a fresh supply from X's home site. Surely, somebody, somewhere in the Mandriva world has run into this situation before? Installing something via source tarball is still the de facto standard methods of aquiring new programs in Linux, isn't it?

Not that I mean to make a stink about it, but doesn't the GPL require a distro to supply some kind of source code gratis?

blackbox is in the main repository. If you don't have the full main repos head over to http://easyurpmi.zarb.org and configure your sources.

If for some reason you still want to compile it yourself then you should know that Mandrake uses x.org not X11. The headers for that appear to be in libxorg-x11-devel which is in the main repos as well.

If you have a download (or 'discovery') version of mandrake it doesn't include the entire main repos (its over 3500 packages) so you might not have all the -devel packages on your CDs or DVD, which is why you need to setup the repos at easyurpmi.

... I think it's similar on Red Hat's distros, so it's not completely debian-specific.

Does mandrake provide a way of looking up from file name -> package name? Then use that.
It's possible you searched for the `wrong' phrases; my search for "X dev" turned up the following interesting package names: x-dev, x-window-system-dev, xlibs-dev, libx11-dev, plus some extensions for input, printing, ...

Well, try using the headers from your other installs--but be *very* careful to check the X versions against each other. A falsely declarated function might lead to hard-to-pin-down bugs. And obvious bugs (i.e. segfaults) if functions are falsely declared to recieve non-pointers.

I wouldn't know. I only have experince with to GNU/Linux distros:
1) rh6.2, where I only installed what was on the (two) CDs (long ago).
2) (current) Debian GNU/Linux, where I # apt-get install irssi-text --and it Just Works.
(from time to time I use Synaptic (GUI frontend) instead; that Just Works too).

I always recommend to grab the binary packages from your distros repositories; that's what I know, and that works for me. I've heard it works for other distros too, but it remains to be investigated how many of those are debian-based

hth --Jonas

In the install software GUI in the Mandrake Control Centre you can search for package names (urpmq is the command line equivalent). The urpmf command can search for which package provides a particular file wether that file exists or not and wether the package is installed or not.

Too right, installing the wrong version of the X headers is so easy to do - you can't just download them off the site. He's letting himself in for a whole world of trouble when it would be simple just to look for the correct RPM

Exactly - installing RPMs written for Mandriva is the way that software is meant to be installed on Mandriva, and I guess the same with Debian and their DEB packages through apt-get. No one using these 2 distros installs vanilla tar balls unless they have a good reason too, its not a good way of installing software at all.

Hosiah please setup your repositories at easyurpmi then learn to use either the urpmi commands or the software install/remove GUIs in the Mandrake Control Centre. This will avoid all this trouble and make your installation of blackbox incredibly easy.

I thought I owed everybody an explanation/followup, since I left the thread hanging here. Thank you all for your knowledgable help, as always.

My one machine that dual-boots Mandriva/Slackware is not online. So anything that I get onto it has to be downloaded to my Fedora/Win-duhs dual-booter, then ported. So, no live updating where the operating system has to talk directly to an online repository.

In the meantime, I've gone back over to the Slackware side of the drive, where I now have a four-way *box manager system going with Blackbox, Fluxbox, FVWM, and Window Manager all inter-connected (switch from one to the other at a click), and all the trimmings for each system!

Well, Dunno what to think of it. After all, every program starts life out as source code, you know. The whole point of Linux is open source - what good is source your machine can't handle? Show me a site like http://dockapps.org that doesn't release most of it's material in raw code.

Anyway, it isn't just a matter of missing header files, the entire programming infrastructure simply isn't there in Mandriva, thought I notice it still supports light stuff like Python/Bash/Perl/etc. But after all, I picked Mandriva to go with Slackie specifically because I wanted two distros at the opposite ends of the spectrum, as different from each other as they could be, and I picked right!

Before anybody jumps me - don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking Mandriva! Mandriva impressed me with it's easy install, it auto-detected every stick of my hardware without my having to configure *anything*, and it comes with all the best games and killer multimedia apps. So you see, Mandriva is the play-distro for the kid in me, Slackware is the work-distro for the boring adult in me!

Yes in the download edition its not included on the CDs. Its all still there in the powerpack editions or for free in the repositories. If you don't have your mandriva machine connected to the net you could always download the files you need from the repo (they're just FTP or HTTP sites) or use a program like fmirror to sync it all across. Then you can just copy the files over to your Mandriva machine however you normally do this.