On Tuesday, February 4, 2003, at 04:01 PM, pkeidesis wrote:
True. Quite a few libraries do, though - the use of such tools is growing in popularity. There are 17 of them in my system's /sw/bin, for example, and I haven't installed all that much with Fink.But not every tool has the mysql_config utility.
But seriously, Sherm, would you or would you not consider it generally good advice to install software in its customary place lest it come back and bite the user in the butt later? At a general level? And directed to someone who comes to unix from a MacOS background?I'd say that depends on what you want to get out of the experience.
If what you want is a working system with an absolute minimum of fuss, then yes, I'd say that accepting defaults is often (but not always) the best way to go.
On the other paw, if you're accustomed to defaults that "just work," you can find yourself unprepared when they don't. I've found that, while the experience of being bitten in the butt is unpleasant - it usually happens at the worst possible time - figuring out what's biting you is usually very educational.
It's actually pretty good advice, although a bit of a generalization. Of course there are, as with every rule, exceptions - Perl on OS X, as it happens, is one of them. I simply wanted to point out that problems, when they occur at all, are generally very minor and easily fixed.if you consider that bad advice, tell me why and I will shut up.
Most UNIX apps these days use a "configure" script generated by autoconf. Many such scripts use a tool like "mysql_config" to find what they need, and of those that don't, 99 times out of 100, all it takes is a "--with-libfoo=/my/odd/place/libfoo.bundle" command-line switch to tell it where to look.
It's quite rare that major surgery - editing makefiles, headers, or other such arcana - is required. It was fairly common, back in the day, but thankfully, "autoconf" has become quite popular.
Otherwise you are casting us into void before we have a chance to become old C programmers.
Touche! Speaking of things that come back to bite you in the butt... ;-)
sherm-- Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson.
