[McIDAS #ZWY-825020]: McIDAS - tclcomp failed to build

Hi Hajo,

re:
> To be honest i did not know before that there are 2 diferent build
> versions around.

Yes.  Unidata has a license to distribute McIDAS to educational institutions
worldwide.  We are also allowed to give our distribution of McIDAS to
sites that are licensed by SSEC (members of the McIDAS Users Group).

> So the version i am testing for Marianne Koenig has been from SSEC and
> not from Unidate.

OK, this now makes sense to me.  You have run into long existing bug
in the Tcl and Tk configure scripts that are only found by the newer
versions of Bash that are contained in newer distributions of Linux
(e.g., SuSE 10, Slackware 10, Fedora Core [45], etc.).  I fixed this
bug in my distribution so that my users did not experience the same
build failure.

> Marianne has send a request to you regarding a version from Unidata.
> Would be nice if we could get one.

I will get Marianne added to the McIDAS exceptions list (a list that
defines which people at non-educational institutions are allowed
access to the Unidata McIDAS distribution) so she can download my
distribution if she likes.

> Also i opened a call at SSEC since IMHO the problem is related to the
> configure script and/or tcl.m4 and maybe configure.in

The problem you are seeing is found on newer releases
of Linux.  As you surmise, it is related to a bug/typo in the Tcl and Tk
configure scripts.  The bug is in a section of code that does not
get executed on Linux, so one might assume that it shouldn't cause
problems, but it does.  There is something in the newer versions of
Bash that is causing a parsing error of the configure scripts;
version of Bash on older distributions ignored the typo.

You will need to edit the configure scripts for both Tcl and Tk and
make the following change:

In ~mcidas/mcidas200[56]/tcl/unix/configure remove the extraneous
"'" (single quote) after /etc/.relid (two instances).

In ~mcidas/mcidas200[56]/tk/unix/configure remove the extraneous
"'" (single quote) after /etc/.relid (one instance).

After making the change, you need to 'clobber' your build attempt
and start anew:

cd ~mcidas/mcidas[56]/src
make clobber
make

By the way, one of the BIG differences in the build procedure that
SSEC provides and the way that Unidata Users work is:

- SSEC has the user run a script that unpacks the distribution
  and then runs make  -- this makes life hard since your editing
  changes will be overwritten by the unpack step

- Unidata has the user cd to the src directory and run make

As far as SSEC fixing this problem, they can and should for their
sites.  However, since they support McIDAS on RedHat Enterprise
Linux, and since the most recent RedHat Enterprise Linux is actually
an older Linux distribution, they will never experience the problem.
My McIDAS users, on the other hand, are not forced to use a particular
distribution of Linux.  Because of this, I run into and fix problems
that SSEC never sees.

Please let me know the results of your build after you edit the
Tcl and Tk configure scripts as I indicated above.

> tia and have a nice weekend

No worries, and you too.


Cheers,

Tom
****************************************************************************
Unidata User Support                                    UCAR Unidata Program
(303) 497-8642                                                 P.O. Box 3000
address@hidden                                   Boulder, CO 80307
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unidata HomePage                       http://www.unidata.ucar.edu
****************************************************************************


Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: ZWY-825020
Department: Support McIDAS
Priority: Normal
Status: Closed