Re: Before I call it a bug - some comments and questions

mamfelt(at)gmail(dot)com (Michael Felt) writes:
> I have just run compiled postgres on AIX (AIX 5.3, pgsql version 8.4.4) and
> have a few surprises regarding the make process.
>
> 1. Very nice - it found gmake as /usr/local/bin/make and called GNUmakefile
> 2. The make completes and it starts a test.
> -- As I build, generally, as root - this failed because initdb does not want to
> run as root
> -- su to another user after changing ownership of the files, fails because not
> enough space (maybe check for space)
> -- enlarge filesystem, run make again, tests all succeed, and then make fails
> trying to install docs (not root!)
> --- why is the initial make installing/copying anything outside of the project
> directory (in this case it was /usr/local/pgsql if I recall correctly).
> --- My non-root user has no right to write there, so the "build" failed again.
>
> 3. A question: what is the best way to get the make process to install in a
> alturnate directory. Some projects use an environment variable.

See the output of

./configure --help

Commonly, I find it sufficient to specify the alternate location via:

./configure --prefix=/path/where/pg/stuff/should/live

That implies bin/, include/, share/, lib/ and other such target
directories. If you have very specific needs, configure options should
hopefully accommodate them.

> 4. Minor point: why is /usr/local/include not in the -I list by default? I had
> to add CFLAGS=-I/usr/local/include for configure to complete.

That's not a standard place to put #include files across all of the
operating systems on which Postgres runs, so it wouldn't be proper to
have it as a default.

Not all systems have /usr/local/include, and on some systems, adding
this would point the compile to *wrong* code. Consider the case where
an engineer at a company like Red Hat (Tom? ;-)) is building official
packages for a Linux distribution.

- On the machine where the build is being done, there might well exist a
/usr/local/include directory.

- But it shouldn't be used, because the *right* #includes to use for the
build are in /usr/include.

- They might have /usr/local/include there specifically as a test that
programs should *NOT* be referencing it without specific instruction
to do so! I could imagine stowing #includes there that are designed
to make stuff break. Probably not a good thing on an Official Build
Server, but an excellent torture test for a QA server :-).

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