HowTo install AliEn from source

Preconditions

A working GNU tool chain (gcc, GNU make, flex, BSD yacc, gettext, autotools etc.) and additional GNU tools like tar, gzip, bzip2, md5sum, patch and wget, about 1 GB of disk space to store source files and build output, 400 Mb in the installation area.

How to get latest version?

Get the source files from CVS, configure installer and build all or individual packages using standard make procedure.

cvs -d :pserver:cvs@alisoft.cern.ch:/soft/cvsroot login 
#pwd cvs
cvs -d :pserver:cvs@alisoft.cern.ch:/soft/cvsroot co antidot

In Dubna it is not possible to get the code via cvs, so one has to copy the code from somwhere else with ssh.

Fix some errors

Get the correct version of the patch file from this page. The version is always the same as the alien version. Apply the patch file.

patch -p0 < patch_file_name

Using your own compiler

If you prefer to use your own compiler, you have to do:

• Be careful that no link to the old alien version is in your environment. This can cause strange problems. You can do a env and grep for the path of your alien installation.
• change the Makefile in apps subdirectory. Exclude in this file "gcc" from the directories listed in DIRS (Since version v217 this is already done while applying the patch file)
• Delete dependencies tp apps/gcc/gcc in all other packages. this can be done by runing the following command in the main directory of antidot.

find . -name Makefile -exec sed -e 's#apps/gcc/gcc##g' -i "{}" ";"

• Remove the gcc subdirectory from apps/Makefile
• Configure everything with the path to the native compiler

./configure --with-gcc-path=<path_to_native_compiler> --prefix=<install_directory> --with-globus-flavor=gcc64dbg

• After that do the normal make and make install. Much better is to use make paranoid-install which stops whenever an error occurs in one of tha many packages to be installed.

Possible errors

• Authentication on 64 with gcc. There is a problem with the openssh delivered with globus on 64 bit systems with gcc 4. The problem does not show up with compiler version gcc 3. The problem is described at http://bugzilla.globus.org/globus/show_bug.cgi?id=4617 . The solution for this systems is to compile globus with debug options flavor=gcc64dbg instead of gcc64).

• perl on the lxcbm in Dubna has a problem. Somehow on has to change the following file ./ext/IO/poll.h.
  • In line 14: #include <poll.h> -> #include <sys/poll.h>
• httpd on lxcbm in Dubna uses somehow the wrong libtool which breaks with an error. To use the correct libtool change the Makefile in apps/portal/httpd .
  • Add --with-included-apr to CONFIGURE_ARGS.

-- FlorianUhlig - 13 Nov 2009