[daip] A question about the libtermcap library (and others) in Linux AIPS

[Samuel Conner]

Dear AIPS Expert,

   I am installing AIPS (31DEC00) on a PC Clone which is running
Mandrake Linux 8.0. This is a new installation; there are no previous
versions of AIPS installed. The Linux installation itself is also very new; 
I loaded it with no apparent problems on 10/22/01.

    I am running into what is for me a puzzle at the "link" stage of certain 
programs in INSTEP3. The loader "/usr/bin/ld" has a switch "-ltermcap" on 
certain COMLNK executions which causes it to look for a library called 
libtermcap. It is failing to find this library. The solution is not to use 
the "-lncurses" switch for I do not appear to have the libncurses library on 
my Linux system.

  I have done some poking around and I find that I do have the following
library:

/lib/libtermcap.so.2.0.8

however, I have no libtermcap.a

I have not got to the creation of the XAS program yet (or whatever takes its 
place in the 31DEC00 revision --- my last installation is
15JUL94, so I am very stale), but I confidently expect that I will
encounter a similar problem with the libX11 library:  I have

/usr/X11R6/lib/libX11.so.6

but no

libX11.a

In fact, as I survey the library directories in my system tree,
it appears me that all of my libraries are of the .so type; I have
noticed no .a libraries yet. I am experiencing this same .so versus
.a issue in other installations: I cannot link Tim Pearson's PGPLOT package, 
for example,  for lack of the libX11 library (presumably libX11.a?).

  I don't know what the difference between these two types of
libraries is. Further, I have no idea how to go about obtaining the
.a libraries if it is essential that I have them. I have enough sense to 
suspect that simply creating them as symbolic links to the .so files is a 
hazardous kludge. It has occurred to me that I may have done something wrong 
in INSTEP1 in terms of configuring the installation process.

In a response to my immediately prior email, Pat Murphy inquired
why I did not use the install.pl perl wizard. Perhaps this would test for 
the existence of the .so libraries and appropriately configure the 
installation process. Well, the answer is that I do not know how to invoke a 
perl script! I'll bet that you didn't anticipate that level of ignorance, 
did you? Talk about "dumb observers!" Forgive me for being such a blockhead. 
Can anyone offer me some guidance about how to proceed?

Respectfully yours,

Sam Conner




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