Make error

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Apr 13, 2009, at 21:29, Patrick Eisenmann wrote:

> I encountered 3 main problems while trying to install GMP onto my  
> Macbook (OS 10.5.6).
>
> The first, if I try to make check in uncompressed library and that  
> library has a space character anywhere in its path, my make check  
> fails on the first set of tests. Moving to a lower directory fixed  
> this.

Spaces in the path is a general problem for most UNIX software. I  
once reported this as a bug to the people who make the autotools  
software, and they said it is not a bug, it is a user error, and they  
will not fix it. Therefore to save yourself from running into these  
problems, I recommend you use paths that do not contain spaces.


> Second, if you accidentally make check before make, it fails  
> inexplicably and reports problems that shouldn't exist. Using make  
> clean, then starting again from the beginning fixed this.

I'll let the gmp people respond to this; it sounds like a bug. (Some  
missing dependency in the makefile?)


> Third, make install failed due to permission errors. Using sudo  
> make install (and having the root password) fixed this.

That's expected, since by default it wants to install into /usr/local  
which requires administrator privilege to modify. If you want to  
install to a location that doesn't require administrator privilege,  
specify it at configure time using the --prefix=/wherever switch.