[MINC-users] Register's configure test for GLUT

[Andrew Janke]

2008/8/18 Alex Zijdenbos <alex at bic.mni.mcgill.ca>:
> Is there anybody familiar enough with autoconf/make to fix Register's
> (and probably Display's) configure setup? I just spent a somewhat
> frustrating amount of time trying to figure out why I couldn't get
> register to link on a ubuntu hardy box. As it turns out, the configure
> phase of the register package runs some tests to determine whether the
> GLUT library is available; but when these tests fail, it happily
> continues, resulting an a bunch of awfully confusing linking errors at
> the end, of this nature:

:) not that I should be laughing mind you... :)  Still this teaches
the value of checking config.log.
Still I only laugh because I have done the same thing countless times
with other packages.

> But configure carries on, now leaving -lglut off the list of libraries
> to link in. From config.log, it turns out that configure not actually
> fails on a missing libglut, but on a missing libXmu and libXi.
> However, these don't actually appear to be required at all; forcefully
> adding -lglut to the linking stage produces a working executable.

Well, they are required, just not by Register for the parts of glut
that it uses. I would be loathe to remove them as this is the
"standard" GLUT checking thing that you get from the autoconf archive.

> I think the solution is to modify the test for libglut such that it
> does not depend on libXmu and libXi, and also to make it required that
> the configure passes that test. I'm afraid I am not familiar enough
> with this to make the change myself though - any takers? Googling I
> see that I am not the first one to be stumped by this :)

Well to me the best fix is to fix the configure.in file so that it
checks the return values and dies "appropriately", I have attached
what I think it should be.  Try this and then autogen.sh and configure
again and let me know how it goes.

> Lastly, I should say that a bandaid (but working) solution on Ubuntu is to
>
>  apt-get install libxmu-dev libxi-dev

Or apt-get install mincbundle... :)

> But really, that is just installing some libraries just to convince a
> broken configure script to do the right thing :)

Not broken, just "optimistic".


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