[ale] ReSolved (mostly): SuSE-10.x too tricky for my builds!

[John Mills]

ALErs -

To close some of the issues in my original post:

On Tue, 3 Apr 2007, John Mills wrote:

> I have two boxen running OpenSuSE-10.x and am having problems with their
> version of 'gcc', and/or with the associated libraries. FC[3|4|5] all
> handle this build just fine.
 
> For example, SuSE has '/usr/include/linux/*.h' files that are for 
> kernel-only builds, and thus crash my user-space builds. A corresponding 
> '/usr/src/linux-xxx/include/*-user.h' exists, but causes other problems. 

 <whine/> <whine/> <whine/>

> Is there a reasonable approach to installing an FC-type build environment
> on a SuSE-10.x platform? Or, is there a common work-around to this
> problem?

Partly I bit the bullet and edited sources, partly I updated a main 
utility.

I found that '/usr/include/linux/types.h' defined some types invisibly to
other headers further down the line that would check, not find, and
redefine the types. 'Gcc' was not amused. I added about 10 '#define
xxx_defined' lines to hold off the down-line redefines.

My '*-user.h' conundrum involved flash devices - very little interest to
most of us - so I just mashed our sources.

I found that SuSE's flex-2.5.31 appeared to be broken, so I downloaded 
2.5.33 and built it from sources. (The flex home-page has a couple of 
cautionary words on v.2.5.31, offering - IIRC - 2.5.4a and 2.5.33.)

That and holding off a few "-Werror" lines in Makefile's got me building 
(but still whining, of course).

Longer range, I'm the only SuSE user in my group so I may step back to FC
at some point: I would then have the same build problems as other team
members, at least. W.r.t. SuSE, I have been happy with the hardware
discovery at installation, but I'm far from hard-core on them (nor very
expert with their configuration and update nuances).

How 'bout a nice holy war as to the best distro for product development? 
Much heat, little light as usual!

 - Mills