Blackbox 0.70 missing libbt?

hussar · 10-29-2005, 11:55 AM

I am running slack-current. My usual window manager is fluxbox, but I have been looking for a pager to put in the slit. I was using fbpager, but I wanted to try some others. I downloaded the source for bbpager 0.4.1beta1 from the BBTools site that hosts tools to use with blackbox, the wm that fluxbox was originally spun off of.

When I try to compile bbpager, it complains that it can't find libbt.pc. I did some googling and found out that as of 0.70 blackbox puts its common files into a library libbt. I checked my system and discovered that I didn't have blackbox installed. So, I installed blackbox 0.70 from the slack-current extras directory using slapt-get. It appears that libbt is not included in the package included on the slackware mirrors. I downloaded the blackbox 0.70 source from blackboxwm.soureforge.net and ran `( ./configure && make ) && find ./ -name libbt* -print`. It shows me the following files:

./lib/.libs/libbt.a
./lib/.libs/libbt.la
./lib/.libs/libbt.lai
./lib/libbt.pc.in
./lib/libbt.la
./lib/libbt.pc

So, libbt.* is compiled when compiling blackbox 0.70 from source, which makes me wonder why it is not included in the slack-current/extras package. Anyone have an idea why it wouldn't be?

As I see it now, my options are to a) forget about bbpager 0.4.1beta1, b) try bbpager 0.31 the previous release, or c) install blackbox 0.70 from source and then try bbpager 0.4.1beta again.

gnashley · 10-30-2005, 12:42 PM

Compile and install bb from source, then compile the other program.

hussar · 10-30-2005, 04:37 PM

Yes, it occurred to me to just install from source and then compile bbpager. Since I have already run ./configure and make, it would be a simple thing to just run `su -c "make install"`. I haven't for two reasons:

1) If I install from source and compile bbpager, but I decide I don't like bbpager, then I've got more cruft built up. It would be harder to remove the compiled source than it would be to remove an installed package.

2) If I install by compiling the source, and then a corrected or updated version of blackbox comes out in slack-current then I could end up with both installed in different places, leading potentially to one or the other application not behaving well.

In the meantime, I sent off a message to support@slackware.com describing the problem. I will post whatever answer I get.

gbonvehi · 10-30-2005, 05:39 PM

Meanwhile you could use Slackware's blackbox.SlackBuild script to compile the program and make a package from it, exactly like Pat did it.
Take a look at: http://mirror.switch.ch/ftp/mirror/s...urce/blackbox/
There you'll find the files Pat used and the SlackBuild script used to build a package from them. It's just a bash script, take a look at it if you know about Bash.

You can download all the files from that directory, put them in a directory and run blackbox.SlackBuild, it will make a package from the sources and put it in /tmp.
Maybe you just need to change some ./configure flags he's using.

hussar · 11-01-2005, 07:23 AM

Thanks for that suggestion. It looks like it will be pretty helpful. I do know a little bit about shell programming, and I looked through Pat's build script and the Makefile for blackbox. Pat uses two lines in his build script that are intended to identify ELF executables and shared objects in the build directory. Although I am no expert, it appears to me that for some reason the libbt stuff falls through the cracks. I only had a little time on my machine yesterday, and I haven't been on it yet today, so I am going to have to do a bit more research before I can say definitely.

One other good thing that came out of your suggestion is that I found out about the xargs tool. It has the potential for simplifying some of my other shell scripts. There are also a couple of ways of using the find command that I wasn't aware of that are in the build script.