[racket] Build issues under Linux (was: Racket v5.0.1)

Eli Barzilay <eli at barzilay.org> writes:
> Racket version 5.0.1 is now available from
...
> Feedback Welcome,

I tried to build Racket from the racket-5.0.1-src-unix.tgz distribution
file on a amd64 Ubuntu 10.4 (Lucid) system.

Following the instruction in the README file I try building and find:

../../../racket/gc/../../utils/nicear /home/barry/work/plt-5.0.1/src/build/lt/libtool --mode=link --tag=CC gcc -release 5.0.1 -rpath /lib -pthread -ldl -lm  -ldl -lm -rdynamic  -o  ../libmzgc.la alloc.lo reclaim.lo allchblk.lo misc.lo mach_dep.lo mach_dep1.lo os_dep.lo mark_rts.lo headers.lo mark.lo obj_map.lo blacklst.lo finalize.lo new_hblk.lo dbg_mlc.lo malloc.lo stubborn.lo checksums.lo pthread_support.lo pthread_stop_world.lo darwin_stop_world.lo typd_mlc.lo ptr_chck.lo mallocx.lo gcj_mlc.lo specific.lo gc_dlopen.lo backgraph.lo win32_threads.lo thread_local_alloc.lo openbsd_stop_world.lo dyn_load.lo
make[6]: ../../../racket/gc/../../utils/nicear: Command not found

There is no nicear file in the distribution or any rule to create it,
so I created a src/utils directory and put in it a file named nicer:

#! /bin/sh
"$@"

This was also need to build racket-5.0 but not previous PLT versions.

Now things fail with:

make[7]: Entering directory `/home/barry/work/plt-5.0.1/src/build/foreign'
cd libffi; make libffi_convenience.la
cd: 1: can't cd to libffi

There is no libffi directory anywhere in the distribution.  I do have
libffi (libffi.so.5.0.10) installed as part of Ubuntu.

I get the impression that nobody tried to build Racket from the
distribution on a vanilla Linux system.

-- 
Barry Fishman