On 18 Apr 2012 at 11:45, Chuck Swiger wrote: > On Apr 18, 2012, at 10:25 AM, Jim Preston wrote: > > Too many times error messages are meaningless to almost anyone who > > is not part of the build team. > > That's may well be true in general, but ClamAV is open source: you've > got the source code and build infrastructure available to inspect and > determine the reason for an error message. In other words, if you're > running ./configure, welcome to the build team.
As an happy user of ClamAV and other open source softwares (on Solaris, Linux), I must recognize compiling has always been a challenge, especially on Solaris, as it is less often tested by developers I guess. I generally succeed anyway, when all dependencies are installed, and sometimes with a fix in a source file like adding an include which was skipped due to an apparently wrong #ifdef... (that was for the passenger (mod_rails) module for apache, not for ClamAV). The compiler, when it detects such an error, can just tell me a variable in undefined, not that the include file is missing of course, otherwise it could fix the error itself ! I'm not a gcc expert but, with some programming experience and some queries on the web, I can generally find my way. I find it more difficult to understand exactly the meaning of some configure flags. What are the consequences of a "--disable-clamuko" or "--enable-bigstack" for instance ? When should I use them ? The little configure --help description is generally not enough for these special options. I know I have to --disable-static and add some CFLAGS when I compile on Solaris for instance, but why would I need static libraries for clamav or what can't I do if I miss them ? Up to now I don't know as that is not explained AFAIK... but everything I need works. IMHO explaining these options (why, when, consequences) could be a nice enhancement. Thank you anyway for this very useful tool ! Best regards, Pierre _______________________________________________ Help us build a comprehensive ClamAV guide: visit http://wiki.clamav.net http://www.clamav.net/support/ml
