I am farely new to installing programs from source and I have gotten confused already. I would like to install xmms, but when I run ./configure, it says the glib-config script can not be found. It says that glib could be installed in PREFIX, in which case PREFIX/bin must be in my path. I don't really understand what PREFIX actually is, a dir or a file or what? I'm not sure how to edit my path either. If anyone could help I'd be very appreciative.

So far so good -

in terminal, type "man glib-config", it explains what is meant by the PREFIX

basically, glib-config should be in /usr/bin, if it is not, then the config file (the one accessed by ./config) should have a line to the effect of "glib-config --prefix=PREFIX <other options> in it as well as a variable called "PREFIX" which you have to assign to where your glib-config file is.

So look for glib-config ...

It sounds like you may not have this file - if not then you need to install it and it's associated packages.

Alternatively, your version of glib may be 2.0 or better - in which case you do not have a glib-config file at all and you're not supposed to: you use pkg-config, which is also in /usr/bin - check to see that you have that. If you have the pkg and not glib then the simplest thing to do will probably be to edit the configure and makefiles so the glib entries are changed to pkg entries. OR you could create a script in /usr/bin called glib-config which passes the arguments to pkg-config.

Programming is easy

Are you sure you have all the requirements (glib) for Xmms already installed? If you are, then you can do the following with your path:

To check your PATH:
$PATH

To change your PATH:
export PATH=NEW PATH VALUE

If you want to add something to your path but not to loose the actual configuration:
export PATH=NEW THING IN THE PATH:$PATH

You can also add things at the end of the path
export PATH=$PATH:NEW THING IN THE PATH

PREFIX seems to be the main directory where glib is installed and surely it has a bin directory with the binary (executable) files, so PREFIX/bin is the full path to the binary files of glib and also the directory where glib-config is supposed to be.

If you don´t know where the glib-config script is you can try the following:
find / -name="glib-config" (be careful because I can´t test now if this command works and could be misspell)


I hope I could help you with this answer and I also hope you are compiling from source because you want to learn and not because you don't know about packages like i did not so time ago...

You want to install the "libglib<version>-devel.rpm" package.
If you can't find it, go to the www.pbone.net website and enter 'glib-devel' in the search box.
Hopefully, they aren't using a bleeding-edge new version. Some projects do that and it makes it difficult when all of the library versions that they use are not supplied by even the newest distro versions. For basic libraries that every program uses that can be a major pain in the rump.

Also read the README and INSTALL files more closely. The PREFIX is where the software is being installed. Which is under /usr. The glib-config script should be in /usr/bin/glib-config and /usr/bin should be in your path.

One gotcha, is don't run as root until you get to the 'make install' part. Because the paths of a normal user and root are different, sometimes this can cause problems. Before the make install step, su to root but don't use 'su -'. This may depend on the distro, and the security level that you use. I hadn't changed the root user's PATH variable.

Also, make it a habit of starting off with ./configure --help | less. There could be options that you want to use, that are not selected by default. A program like 'mplayer' will have an option to support the frame buffer so that you can play videos from the console, but you may need to include an option for this to happen.

Thanks for the responses guys,

No luck yet with the xmms. Same "glib" problem. Something else though:

jschiwal: I grabbed libglib1.2-devel-1.2.10-11.mdk.i586.rpm from pbone for my mand. 10.1 official. Something weird is going on though. I ran it and found it dependent on libglib1.2-1.2.10-11.mdk.i586.rpm, so I downloaded that too, but when I ran it, I hit the 'install it' button and there was no response whatsoever, not even a progress bar or "Installed!". Then I tried the devel and the same thing happened. I repeated this a couple times. I feel like I've really messed something up. Any ideas? thanks again in advance.

get all this off your install cd's/dvd, these libs ( glib-1.x and gtk-1.x) are standard libs that come with almost all distros.

I've got gtk,which I got from the installation cd, but apparently the cd's don't include glib. I have tried installing glib from source and no luck with that either. Some kind of syntax error in gsrtfunc.c along with an audiofile.h problem; but I am not too familiar with programming. I am going to go to pbone and hopefully find an rpm form of glib. Thanks for the help and advice.

I included the link because his distribution wasn't indicated.

On mandrake, you can enter more than one package as arguments to urpmi.

So
urpmi libglib libglib-devel
will install both packages. This method can resolve dependencies for packages that you download. Generally it works best to install the package the starts lib....

http://mirrors.usc.edu/pub/linux/dis...86/media/main/

you want libglib and libglib-devel ( the 1.2 versions, not glib-2.x (just so you know, glib-1.x and glib-2.x are two completely different libraries and are not compatible. they can be installed on the same system without conflicts, but a program requiring glib-1.x (like xmms) cannot use glib-2.x to satisfy the dependency)).

Well, I can never get too far....same thing with gtk even though its for sure installed. I'm afraid to download another gtk lib because the last libglibs I tried(before these last ones which worked) made my comp work at 100% for no visible reason. I am pretty sure that was a result of my hasty downloading. Are there other things I can do to fix this?

what's the output of

rpm -qa gtk

also, remember, your using Mandrake so you will need all of the -devel packages.
also, why don't you use urpmi to install xmms or get the packages from the link I referenced above?

edit: I should also add ( though I could be wrong here) that IIRC Mandrake disables mp3 support, you have to get another package from a third party mirror (something like xmms-mp3).

How would I go about using urpmi? Do I need to download any xmms files to do that? The rpm -qa gtk thing didn't output anything, but I know I have gtk+2.0. I've read that 2.0 isn't compatible with xmms but I dunno. Should I just d/l the devel package for 2.0? Yeah I'm gonna get the plugin or whatever.

do a google for "easyurpmi", there is a little setup involved. you could just get the rpm's from that site I linked earlier and install them. your correct, xmms cannot use gtk-2.x, only gtk-1.x(see earlier post on this)

omfg i never even saw the xmmx rpm earlier. *sigh*

thanks for helping me out