Re: Graphic support in CVS

[Vincent Lefevre <vincent@vinc17.org>]

On 2006-01-21 15:11:35 +0100, Karim Belabas wrote:
> * Ilya Zakharevich [2006-01-19 00:29]:
> > > Just tried it again on my work machine (out-of-the-box Mandriva-10.1):
> > > Term::Gnuplot fails to compile because libgd could not be found and a -lgd
> > > linking flag is included
> > 
> > Sigh.  No, this means that gd library was present (at least in *some*
> > form), gd headers were present, but the linking failed...
> > 
> > > [ /usr/lib/libgd.so.2 exists, but no /usr/lib/libgd.so link, which would
> > > require some silly *-dev package to be installed first, I presume. ].
> > 
> > I can't deduce any trick which would detect such silly a misconfiguration...
> 
> Unfortunately, it's now the default setup in most (all?) Linux distros.
> I do regret it also, although I can see the original logic for doing so.

To be able to compile and link against some library, you need both
the library itself and the header files, which are provided by the
-dev package (and this is the goal of the -dev package). If headers
are present, but not the .so file, then there is something broken in
the library packages.

The .so file depends on the library API and is not needed to dynamically
link against the library.

-- 
Vincent Lefèvre <vincent@vinc17.org> - Web: <http://www.vinc17.org/>
100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <http://www.vinc17.org/blog/>
Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / SPACES project at LORIA