how to compile apt from source?
 

Hi,

So I am trying to get apt (the real apt) to work on Slackware, and everything seems to be going fine. I successfully installed dpkg with no trouble, but when I come to install the apt client, the configure and make go well, but I don't know how to install it. Normally it's make install, but it doesn't work here. Does anyone know how to install it once it's compiled?


thanks,
rabbit2345

When you come accross this sort of problem, there's a few good steps to take:

(1) Look in Makefile for the string "install". See if it is actually a defined targed. If it is not, you probably needed to pass some flag to ./configure and forgot to. Or, maybe (read: almost 0% chance) there is a nonstandard install target.
(2) Read the INSTALL and README files.
(3) Post here. :-)

If (1) and (2) don't solve your problems, you can always manually setup the install. make install usually just moved the binary into /usr/bin and any libs into /usr/lib, setups sym links as appropriate etc. However, I would imagine apt has a bit more complicated install since it's sort of A Big Deal(tm).

ok, So I went back to take a closer look at ./configure, and I see that it is not setting one of its variables properly. Configure apperaas to also be missing one of its files.

the first message about dot is:
What is this "dot" program? I think the script doesn't know it's missing, and it fails to set the variable.

The second error is:
The file doesn't even exist after running configure, I'm not sure what to do about this.


I think installing "dot" would fix the first one, and possibly the second since they are linked together.

thanks,
rabbit2345

Hey rabbit, I'm not really sure, but I would think that dot is referring to "dot.conf - A ConfigurationFile Parser Library"

see http://www.azzit.de/dotconf/ . But again, I'm not really sure.

Google says Graphviz has a legitimate "dot" application, but it makes less sense to me why that package would be needed for this. http://www.graphviz.org/

(There is no package in the Ubuntu repos (all branches) called simply "dot", btw.)

I think I have a solution to this.

But I do need to know where the dpkg database for packages is. I don't need repo information, just installed packages. I think I can just install apt with dpkg, but I need to convert the pkgtool database into dpkg.

Or do you think it would be easier to just switch to Debian?

For me, anyway, that'd probably be enough to move to Debian. You get l33t points if you can functionally use slack for sure, but you get to keep most of them moving over to Debian, anyway. Is there anything keeping you on slack? I moved from redhat/fedora to debian a few years ago and found the transition quite smooth.

Yeah, there's really nothing keeping me on Slackware, I'm going to move to Debian. I just wanted to see if I could take Slackware, but I think I'll go with something a little less intense. I heard Slackware was quite hard to manage. Thanks for your help anyway.


rabbit2345