[McIDAS #MVO-904497]: Build works, but how do you enter McIDAS-X Text commands?

Hi Samuel,

re: how did you finally get the distribution to build

> I let the mcidas_env.sh file determine the environment variables, instead
> of setting them by hand as described in step 3 of the "Testing the Build"
> section of 
> http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/software/mcidas/2007/users_guide/BuildingandInstallingMcIDAS-X.html

Good.  This is what is meant in the web page instructions for testing a new 
installation.

> I should have read closer before I got to this step.  It seems as though these
> instructions assume you've installed it before.

The idea behind the testing section is to let users that are upgrading from an 
existing,
working distribution know how to test the new code before replacing the old 
installation
with the new one.  Brand new installations have no need to do this as they have
nothing to lose by installing immediately after the build completes.

> I must comment also that I had to go into $HOME/mcidas2007/tcl/unix and
> $HOME/mcidas2007/tk/unix and perform a ./configure, make, make install.

This should not have been necessary, and, quite frankly, is a bad idea.  The 
reason it
is a bad idea is that the parameters passed to configure for both the Tcl and Tk
builds indicate where the Tcl and Tk libraries, respectively, can be found.  
Running
configure from the ~mcidas/mcidas2007/tcl/unix and ~mcidas/mcidas2007/tk/unix
directories without specifying where to access libraries will result in the use
of the system installation of Tcl/Tk.  This may or may not be a big problem 
depending
on how up to date the system Tcl/Tk installation is.

> These steps are not described in the instructions.

Correct, because they should not be needed and are not desired.

> For a new install it can be very confusing.

If this step was necessary, I would whole-heartedly agree with you, it would be 
very
confusing.  This step should not be necessary, however.  What we need to do now 
is
determine why it was necessary to do this on your machine.

> I think I had to do the same for $HOME/mcidas2007/g2clib as well.

Then something is definitely wrong on your machine.  I just built the 
distribution
on the suite of Unidata test platforms and on several user machines.  The OSes
that now have had successful builds and are running smoothly are:

Sun Solaris SPARC 5.9
Sun Solaris x86 5.9
Sun Solaris x86 10
Sun Solaris x86_64 10
RedHat Enterprise WS 4
Fedora Core 5 Linux
Fedora Core 6 Linux
Fedora 7 Linux
FreeBSD 4.9
MacOS-X
SGI IRIX64
IBM AIX 5.1

I only mention this because I am convinced that there is something wrong
on your machine that may well present problems as you start using McIDAS 
actively.
Again, we need to figure out why the build was failing on your machine and
correct it.

Cheers,

Tom
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Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: MVO-904497
Department: Support McIDAS
Priority: Normal
Status: Closed