I am trying to install Freecad on Slack 14.2, which I have been running for about 6 weeks now.

I ran into a problem where one of the requisite dependencies had a "recipe failed" while trying to run the build script, which I got from SlackBuilds.org. To name the requisite package, it was Graphviz.

I hacked through the script and the Makefile for a day, learned some things, but could not come up with a fix. I tried emailing the guy but I imagine he's busy like me. I finally determined I must get down to it and learn just how to write a script.

To that end, I request help in the form of a simple example of WHY (not how - plenty of those all over the internet) I would need a soft link to build a package. Any clue will be appreciated.

Symlinks. I know how to create them and I know what they do. But what are they for? Why do I need them to build a package?

I have FreeCad on Slackware64.

You're welcome to try installing it, if you don't ever want to use it. I tried it myself. I don't remember GraphWiz, but there's 25 or more python modules required, some extremely difficult to source.

If you want to use FreeCad, grab the AppImage, like I did.

Install FreeCad on Slack via Slackbuilds.

Keep in mind there are dependencies that need to be installed first for FreeCad to build and work correctly.

For Dependencies: See bassmadrigal's posting below.

Luck with it!

~Eric

---

Edited: bassmadrigal pointed out in a posting below that I had inadvertently used an incorrect link for FreeCad @ Slackbuilds. I've corrected this above. Thanks, @bassmadrigal!

We need to know what the error is if we're going to try and solve your problem. Graphiz builds fine on my system (although, this is an extremely "dirty" system, but builds are frequently tested on "clean" systems).

symlinks are essentially shortcuts on Linux. You shouldn't really need to worry about symlinks for packaging. Even if a program requires it, it will typically generate those symlinks automatically during the build process.

Somehow you linked the 13.37 version of FreeCAD. On the 14.2 version of FreeCAD it requires a lot more dependencies. For 14.2, it requires the following:

Thank you, corrected in my original posting. ~Eric

Thanks everyone. I got the FreeCAD appimage as suggested by business kid, and it is working well for me.

I also heard from the graphviz maintainer; his only comment was that it was strange that I was getting this error, since the build script and everything has tested good elsewhere. I have seen where other people have had the same problem and type of message but I could not understand how they solved the problem.

Meanwhile, I tried to compile and install Inkscape and its requisite packages. I successfully installed all of the requisites and then got the same kind of error message and failure trying to run the inkscape build script as I got with graphviz.

Another problem I have been having is the frequent loss of keyboard, mouse, and/or monitor, forcing me to shut off the machine power and reboot.

All this leads me to wonder if the snag is with my hardware somehow. I will try to install slackware on another machine and see how that goes, when I get the time.

Meanwhile, I have realized a workaround I can try (FreeCAD and Inkscape are my bread and butter, whereas solving all my slackware problems can wait):

I dug my old (slackware-based) Vector Linux machine out of the attic, which I had mothballed when I knew nothing about building and installing packages, and when the programs I needed had not been updated sufficiently for the package tool for dummys that Vector provides.

I realized that I can do anything on Vector Linux now, that I can do on my Slack machine. And since that now includes building packages without using a dummy auto tool, I will simply use it (for Inkscape, at least - hoping it works) till I get everything straight on my new machine.

Here's my new machine (same machine about which this thread originated):
~# uname -a
Linux darkstar 4.4.14 #2 SMP Fri Jun 24 13:38:27 CDT 2016 x86_64 AMD A6-3620 APU with Radeon(tm) HD Graphics AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux

Here's the actual output leading up to the error message I got when my inkscape build script aborted on my new machine (it's the same as the output and error messages I got for graphviz, or close to it):

ui/widget/selected-style.cpp:113:1: warning: ISO C++ forbids converting a string constant to 'gchar* {aka char*}' [-wWrite-strings]
};
^

CXX ui/widget/spinbutton.o
CXX ui/widget/spin-scale.o
CXX ui/widget/spin-slider.o
CXX ui/widget/style-subject.o
CXX ui/widget/style-swatch.o
CXX ui/widget/text.o
CXX ui/widget/tolerance-slider.o
CXX ui/widget/unit-menu.o
CXX ui/widget/unit-tracker.o
CXX ui/widget/clipmaskicon.o
CXX ui/widget/highlight-picker.o
CXX ui/widget/layertypeicon.o
CXX ui/widget/insertordericon.o
CXX ui/widget/addtoicon.o
CXXLD inkscape
/usr/lib64/gcc/x86_64-slackware-linux/5.3.0/../../../../x86_64-slackware-linux/bin/ld: cannot find -lnss3
/usr/lib64/gcc/x86_64-slackware-linux/5.3.0/../../../../x86_64-slackware-linux/bin/ld: cannot find -lsmime3
/usr/lib64/gcc/x86_64-slackware-linux/5.3.0/../../../../x86_64-slackware-linux/bin/ld: cannot find -lssl3
/usr/lib64/gcc/x86_64-slackware-linux/5.3.0/../../../../x86_64-slackware-linux/bin/ld: cannot find -lsoftoken3
/usr/lib64/gcc/x86_64-slackware-linux/5.3.0/../../../../x86_64-slackware-linux/bin/ld: cannot find -lnssutil3
/usr/lib64/gcc/x86_64-slackware-linux/5.3.0/../../../../x86_64-slackware-linux/bin/ld: cannot find -lplds4
/usr/lib64/gcc/x86_64-slackware-linux/5.3.0/../../../../x86_64-slackware-linux/bin/ld: cannot find -lplc4
/usr/lib64/gcc/x86_64-slackware-linux/5.3.0/../../../../x86_64-slackware-linux/bin/ld: cannot find -lnspr4
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
Makefile:7231: recipe for target 'inkscape' failed
make[3]: *** [inkscape] Error 1
make[3]: Leaving directory '/tmp/SBo/inkscape-0.92.4/src'
Makefile:5291: recipe for target 'all' failed
make[2]: *** [all] Error 2
make[2]: Leaving directory '/tmp/SBo/inkscape-0.92.4/src'
Makefile:1472: recipe for target 'all-recursive' failed
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory '/tmp/SBo/inkscape-0.92.4'
Makefile:1128: recipe for target 'all' failed
make: *** [all] Error 2

If it's looking for GCC 5.3.0 stuff, it seems you haven't upgraded your 14.2 installation to include all the patches. It was updated to GCC 5.5.0 in Feb 2018. I don't know if this is related to your problem...

West Jordan, eh? I lived in Central City 1960-1987. Born in LDS Hosp. Doctor bill came to $75. My father protested it because he had paid $50 ea. for the other 6 kids.

I have not upgraded anything. I hope it is the problem. Last night I learned sort of what the GCC was. I do not know how to upgrade. I will find out. That would be an upgrade of the kernel, no?

If so, this starts (as I suspected it would) getting into my other issue I have not mentioned: I was unable to install the OS to boot without making and using (as I still am) a boot stick. I want to fix it to boot via elilo without the stick and I also want to switch from huge to generic. I am in the process, off and on, of figuring all that out.

I was unable to use my vectorlinux box for inkscape. Fundamental problem, it is only produced for 64 bit for linux now, and my box is i686. So I will just use my son's Windows box for now.

I was born and raised here (well, through elementary school we lived in West Jordan, then my parents moved to Riverton, then I moved away from Utah for 10+ years due to the Air Force and now I'm back in West Jordan), and I had never heard of Central City. I had to look it up to find out that it is a part of SLC. You learn something new every day!

I honestly don't know if that is related to the problem, but it would be the first place I'd start since it seems to be working fine for the maintainer, who is likely running an up-to-date installation. And yes, this would include upgrading the kernel to the latest version in 14.2 right now, which is the 4.4.208.

To upgrade, you can either grab all the updated packages from the patches/ directory on your favorite mirror and then run upgradepkg against all of them, or you can use slackpkg, which can help automate some of those steps. slackpkg is by far the easiest once you have it configured. The main thing is you'll want to uncomment ONE (only one) mirror in /etc/slackpkg/mirrors for 14.2 (not current, as that is the development version of Slackware and can occasionally cause your software to break). Once you uncomment the mirror, you'd run the following as root:

NOTE: You may want to uncomment the kernel line in your /etc/slackpkg/blacklist to enable you to manually upgrade your kernel and keep your existing one working. Before you run the above, let's get your elilo figured out so we can give you all the steps you'd need to do to ensure your computer boots as it should.

Once upgrade-all runs, it will prompt you with what you want to do with new conf files. You can safely overwrite any that you haven't modified. If you've modified some, you may want to use the "d" option to see the differences between them, which might help you decide what to do.

When you're done, you'll then want to get your bootloader updated. See my next portion for that.

Give us some more details on your system layout. What type of drive is the OS and EFI partitions are? We should be able to get everything working normally once we have more details on the problems you're running into.

Personally, I don't get why any of you are running (2016)14.2 still. Current ISOs are quite stable, not the iffy things you expect from a development branch. I grab the ISO as a snapshot and, as long as you don't grab something while it's being updated, you're ok. The benefit in the ISO is that it's a complete snapshot. Give him a few weeks, and Ponce's packages are built off current.

If this person is unable to upgrade their system and still has to boot of a usb drive, I don't know if I would be suggesting -current. Yes, -current can be very stable for packages included with -current, but it can be difficult to deal with the occasional broken 3rd-party applications if you keep it upgraded. Not to mention that not all scripts on SBo work and ponce's repo is not as easy as the regular SBo repo (since you have to remove the git repo each time you want to update it).

As for the rest of us who are still not on -current, we need stability with our 3rd-party packages. I don't have the time to upgrade very often (I finally updated my 14.2 system yesterday after about 3-4 months from the last time I did it). I do run -current on my htpc since the hardware is new enough that it is not supported in 14.2, but I haven't touched the OS since I installed it back in May. I also don't have time to track down fixes for those times I find broken packages in ponce's repo because of a new -current update.

All valid points. The thing about FreeCad is that their AppImages are pretty good at handling dependencies (I speak from experience) so I wouldn't be too worried about deps. If he was building a multimedia system with all the oddball libraries, then indeed he might have issues.

FreeCad make the best AppImages I am aware of, and that's saying something. They have to, or else support these crazy python modules they use.

I recently had my mobo and hard drive die, at about the same time. That marked the end of my Windows use on my own machines. I replaced both with ebay parts. The replacement mobo looked just like the old one, only difference was the wireless thingy-bob, which I don't use. I assume that because I use ELILO every day to boot, tho it be from a stick, I do have UEFI. I verified I have /sys/firmware/efi.

I know I still have an x86_64 because how else would I be running all such software?

As for my hard drive, it's new but only 500 GB. I partitioned it to do the slackware install, using fdisk. If I do

fdisk -l /dev/sda I get

Disk /dev/sda: 465.8 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x74ae2f62

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sda1 2048 41945087 41943040 20G 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 41945088 962594815 920649728 439G 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 962594816 976773167 14178352 6.8G 82 Linux swap

and if I do

minfo -i /dev/sda1 :: | grep 'disk type' I get

init :: non DOS media

I am not sure what an EFI System Partition is, and I don't think I have one, and maybe that's a nice chunk of my problem....?

It depends on your use case.

14.2 just works for what I need on my desktop, I only need to upgrade when I see a security fix, which happen less often in stable than current, with fewer updates so less update time is needed.

The only possible recent catch for me is that I use LibreOffice, which as of recently can no longer be updated for 14.2 (I use AlienBob's; from his blog: "unable to compile the 6.3 or 6.4 releases on the stable version of Slackware due to outdated/obsoleted libraries"), whereas he is able to generate updates for current. This version is still usable with no security advisories, but I'm having to start looking at options, like an AppImage.

I am running current with Sarpi-provided kernels on RPi4 (not exactly the same -current as x86_64) because 14.2 can't be installed on it, and I'm finding it very usable and stable. As I don't spend a lot of time on it, the more updates for current don't impact me much timewise, but Slackbuild updates can be more time consuming on current than on stable. I modified the 14.2 arduino Slackbuild for ARM and newer arduino package, simple changes but that took me longer than I expected. That was fine for one package, since I was also learning something new (about libraries), but if updating a lot of Slackbuilds, the time commitment could balloon.

There's no perfect solution, Slackware just comes closer to it in an OS for me than just about any other I've tried, whether stable or current. :-)

TKS

Fair enough. I'm still running Raspbian on my R-Pi 4 because my recent backups seemed to be corrupt somehow and I nuked myself here. Still fine tuning my reinstall. There is a technical superiority running a 64bit OS on a 64bit PC, but I'm not sure the difference is huge in real life.