[Magic-dev] Re: Debian compile and install

[Svenn Are Bjerkem]

On Sat, 12 Nov 2005 20:56:18 -0800
"R. Timothy Edwards" <tim.edwards at multigig.com> wrote:

> 
> Are you sure you've tried magic version 7.3 from the opencircuitdesign
> website (http;//opencircuitdesign.com)?  This should have no difficulty
> compiling under Debian if you follow the instructions on the website.

I can confirm that magic-7.3.108 compiles on Debian sid (unstable). I assume you are allowed to install packages on your system (otherwise talk to your administrator about it. I am looking at way to bypass itchy admins ...)

You need to have the packages tcl8.4, tcl8.4-dev, tk8.4, tk8.4-dev installed. Download and unpack magic, enter the magic directory and run the command

./configure --prefix=/opt/foss/magic-7.3.108 --with-tcl=/usr/lib/tcl8.4 --wi
th-tk=/usr/lib/tk8.4

It is also nice to have the package blt installed.

The --prefix above tell where to install the software. Feel free to put it anywhere you like.

> 
> > Take a look at this mailing list. Quite a large portion of questions is 
> > about compilation and installation. Some of them have not been answered 
> > (and maybe resolved) yet. I really think that the Magic team should make 
> > more efforts on this issue.
> 
> This is because the developers (mostly me, but it applies to others as
> well) spend our time writing source code, inventing algorithms, not to
> mention doing layout and submitting chip designs to foundries.
> I try to leave it to others to generate, distribute, and maintain
> packages, such as for Debian or RedHat.  Partly this is because I have
> a limited number of systems myself (one Fedora Core 2 laptop and one
> Fedora Core 3 desktop 64-bit Opteron system).  If I keep up a Debian
> package, then 1) it will take time away from development, and 2) someone
> will come along and complain that I don't have a Slackware package, or
> Solaris binaries, etc.  Fortunately, there are people out there willing
> to do this.

We got to start somewhere and collect important issues for each distribution in order to see if something needs to be done in the source tree. I don't know other distributions but Debian, and here it is possible to have the package system patch the sourcecode before compiling it in order to "massage" the package to fit the Debian binary tree.

Most of these things can be solved with the autoconf system, but I find autoconf quite a hassle to learn.

-- 
Svenn