[GRASS-dev] Having trouble building GRASS from source and asking for help

GRASS GRASS developer
1

I am attempting to build GRASS on my machine and I suppose I am having trouble. I am so bewildered by all of this I can’t actually be sure. I am posting to request help. Here is my situation:

I am new to GRASS development, and I am working on GSoC on integrating PDAL interoperability. I have not yet set up my project’s wiki page or I would link it in this sentence.

I am running OSGeo-live on Oracle Virtual Box with my base OS being Windows 8.1.

My mentor, Vashek Petras, directed me to start here: https://grasswiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Compile_and_Install_Ubuntu#Dependencies

and work through the build procedure. On that page, I got down as far as “simple configure, compile and install” and ran that once. I don’t remember what it told me, but I figured it was okay since I could always do it again, so I executed the next line (under the “or”):

./configure && make -j2 && sudo checkinstall

When I do this, I get the message
Building Debian package… FAILED!

so I am thinking this is bad and I should get this to succeed before moving on to other steps. Here is more information: When I try to run it again, I get a screen of Warnings:

checkinstall 1.6.2, Copyright 2009 Felipe Eduardo Sanchez Diaz Duran
This software is released under the GNU GPL.

**** Debian package creation selected ***

*** Warning: The package name “%PACKAGE_NAME” contains upper case
*** Warning: letters. dpkg might not like that so I changed
*** Warning: them to lower case.

*** Warning: The package name “%package_name” does not start with
*** Warning: an alphanumetic character. dpkg might not like that so I prefixed
*** Warning: it with a number 0.

*** Warning: The package name “0%package_name” contains illegal
*** Warning: characters. dpkg might not like that so I changed
*** Warning: them to dashes.

*** Warning: The package version “%PACKAGE_VERSION” is not a
*** Warning: debian policy compliant one. Please specify an alternate one

I let it continue to run, but eventually it offers to show me the log, which appears here:

dpkg-deb: error: parsing file ‘/var/tmp/tmp.J1ZMR3Tl3Q/package/DEBIAN/control’ near line 11 package ‘0-package-name’:
empty value for version
/var/tmp/tmp.J1ZMR3Tl3Q/dpkgbuild.log (END)

Is this enough information for someone to help me?

  • Paul Schrum

Raleigh, NC, US

2

On Mon, May 15, 2017 at 4:14 PM, Paul Schrum <paul.schrum@gmail.com> wrote:

I should get this to succeed before moving on to other steps.

You don't actually need to do the "install" step to run it. Just run it
using ./bin.../grass73.

Generally speaking, it would be good to get this resolved.

3

Hi,

To me this looks like checkinstall is failing caus not all required metainformation is given.
See: https://manpages.debian.org/jessie/checkinstall/checkinstall.8.en.html

Try specifying amongst others - -pkgversion

Hope that helps...

Cheers
Stefan

________________________________________
Von: grass-dev [grass-dev-bounces@lists.osgeo.org] im Auftrag von Paul Schrum [paul.schrum@gmail.com]
Gesendet: Montag, 15. Mai 2017 22:14
An: grass-dev@lists.osgeo.org
Betreff: [GRASS-dev] Having trouble building GRASS from source and asking for help

I am attempting to build GRASS on my machine and I suppose I am having trouble. I am so bewildered by all of this I can't actually be sure. I am posting to request help. Here is my situation:

I am new to GRASS development, and I am working on GSoC on integrating PDAL interoperability. I have not yet set up my project's wiki page or I would link it in this sentence.

I am running OSGeo-live on Oracle Virtual Box with my base OS being Windows 8.1.

My mentor, Vashek Petras, directed me to start here: https://grasswiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Compile_and_Install_Ubuntu#Dependencies
and work through the build procedure. On that page, I got down as far as "simple configure, compile and install" and ran that once. I don't remember what it told me, but I figured it was okay since I could always do it again, so I executed the next line (under the "or"):

./configure && make -j2 && sudo checkinstall

When I do this, I get the message
Building Debian package... FAILED!

so I am thinking this is bad and I should get this to succeed before moving on to other steps. Here is more information: When I try to run it again, I get a screen of Warnings:

checkinstall 1.6.2, Copyright 2009 Felipe Eduardo Sanchez Diaz Duran
           This software is released under the GNU GPL.

*****************************************
**** Debian package creation selected ***
*****************************************

*** Warning: The package name "%PACKAGE_NAME" contains upper case
*** Warning: letters. dpkg might not like that so I changed
*** Warning: them to lower case.

*** Warning: The package name "%package_name" does not start with
*** Warning: an alphanumetic character. dpkg might not like that so I prefixed
*** Warning: it with a number 0.

*** Warning: The package name "0%package_name" contains illegal
*** Warning: characters. dpkg might not like that so I changed
*** Warning: them to dashes.

*** Warning: The package version "%PACKAGE_VERSION" is not a
*** Warning: debian policy compliant one. Please specify an alternate one

I let it continue to run, but eventually it offers to show me the log, which appears here:

dpkg-deb: error: parsing file '/var/tmp/tmp.J1ZMR3Tl3Q/package/DEBIAN/control' near line 11 package '0-package-name':
empty value for version
/var/tmp/tmp.J1ZMR3Tl3Q/dpkgbuild.log (END)

Is this enough information for someone to help me?

- Paul Schrum
Raleigh, NC, US

4

* Vaclav Petras <wenzeslaus@gmail.com> [2017-05-15 22:05:20 -0400]:

On Mon, May 15, 2017 at 4:14 PM, Paul Schrum <paul.schrum@gmail.com> wrote:

I should get this to succeed before moving on to other steps.

You don't actually need to do the "install" step to run it. Just run it
using ./bin.../grass73.

I second this, especially since you are going to develop and, likely,
recompile several times.

Generally speaking, it would be good to get this resolved.

What exactly?

Nikos

5

* Paul Schrum <paul.schrum@gmail.com> [2017-05-15 16:14:12 -0400]:

I am attempting to build GRASS on my machine and I suppose I am having
trouble. I am so bewildered by all of this I can't actually be sure. I am
posting to request help. Here is my situation:

I am new to GRASS development, and I am working on GSoC on integrating PDAL
interoperability. I have not yet set up my project's wiki page or I would
link it in this sentence.

I am running OSGeo-live on Oracle Virtual Box with my base OS being Windows
8.1.

My mentor, Vashek Petras, directed me to start here:
https://grasswiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Compile_and_Install_Ubuntu#Dependencies
and work through the build procedure. On that page, I got down as far
as "simple
configure, compile and install" and ran that once. I don't remember what
it told me, but I figured it was okay since I could always do it again, so
I executed the next line (under the "or"):

./configure && make -j2 && sudo checkinstall
When I do this, I get the message
Building Debian package... FAILED!

Note, checkinstall is mean to help installing software that you can
easily uninstall later on if and when you wish so.

Do you intend to build a .deb package to install it afterwards
on a system that uses deb packages? If not, I suggest that you don't
use checkinstall at all. See also Vaclav's answer in his own post in
this thread.

What you could do, after configuring and before actually compiling, is
perhaps you want to look at/run `make check` (see
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1735473/what-does-make-check-do#1735553).

Nikos

6

All,

Thanks for your help. My intent? I am a GSoC student. All I want to do is get GRASS to build (and later PDAL) so I can start coding on my project. I am not blindly following the instructions on the linked wiki page, but almost blindly in that I do not understand most of the context of the specifics.

My preference would be to skip it if it is not essential for my objective. By skipping this, I come to another mystery statement in the instructions. I will post them by starting a separate thread.

  • Paul
···

On Tue, May 16, 2017 at 4:40 AM, Nikos Alexandris <nik@nikosalexandris.net> wrote:

I am attempting to build GRASS on my machine and I suppose I am having
trouble. I am so bewildered by all of this I can’t actually be sure. I am
posting to request help. Here is my situation:

I am new to GRASS development, and I am working on GSoC on integrating PDAL
interoperability. I have not yet set up my project’s wiki page or I would
link it in this sentence.

I am running OSGeo-live on Oracle Virtual Box with my base OS being Windows
8.1.

My mentor, Vashek Petras, directed me to start here:
https://grasswiki.osgeo.org/wiki/Compile_and_Install_Ubuntu#Dependencies
and work through the build procedure. On that page, I got down as far
as “simple
configure, compile and install” and ran that once. I don’t remember what
it told me, but I figured it was okay since I could always do it again, so
I executed the next line (under the “or”):

./configure && make -j2 && sudo checkinstall
When I do this, I get the message
Building Debian package… FAILED!

Note, checkinstall is mean to help installing software that you can
easily uninstall later on if and when you wish so.

Do you intend to build a .deb package to install it afterwards
on a system that uses deb packages? If not, I suggest that you don’t
use checkinstall at all. See also Vaclav’s answer in his own post in
this thread.

What you could do, after configuring and before actually compiling, is
perhaps you want to look at/run make check (see
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1735473/what-does-make-check-do#1735553).

Nikos