Re: configure: error: Berkeley DB version mismatch

[Howard Chu <hyc@symas.com>]

Tay, Gary wrote:

> 1) As u may or may NOT be aware, a lot of Solaris8 machines do not have
> GNU's binutils package (www.sunfreeware.com) installed BY DEFAULT, and
> therefore do not have GNU's ld, I don't have it on my Solaris8 box,
>  

> Cameron seems to have it as he has /usr/local/bin/make.
>  
"make" is not part of GNU binutils. It is its own package, so this 
assumption is unwarranted.

> However I can't find binutils package for Solaris9, and I could not find
> Solaris9 version of /usr/local/bin/ld on my Solaris9 box, Where is your
> Solaris9 GNU version of ld come from? Did u use the Solaris8 version of
> binutils package for Solaris9?
>  
Most GNU utils come from www.gnu.org

> 2) I would like to share this comment from www.sunfreeware.com with all
> of us:
>
> "binutils-2.11.2-sol8-sparc-local.gz This GNU package includes the GNU
> versions of the ld, as, ar, nm, ranlib, strip, strings and other
> programs - installs in /usr/local. With some compiles, the use of Sun
> versions of these programs may be better. The Sun versions of these
> utilities come from the developer SUNW packages from the Solaris CDs and
> are installed in /usr/ccs/bin. Which set of utilies gets used depends on
> whether /usr/local/bin (GNU) or /usr/ccs/bin (Sun) are first in the PATH
> environmental variable."
>  
2.11.2 is a very old release of the GNU binutils. Probably not suitable 
for Solaris 9 or newer.

> 3) As Cameron seems to use Solaris8 GNU's make (/usr/local/bin/make) and
> SUN's ld (/usr/ccs/bin/ld), could u comment if this is OK? 
>
> I think I prefer to follow the advice of sunfreeware, or logically have
> tallied version of make and ld, be it SUN's or GNU's.
>  
You're acting out of superstition, not knowledge. Also, as I noted 
already, "make" is not part of the binutils package, so the quote you 
post above has no relevance to the question of which version of make to use.

Yes, in general the Sun code manipulation utilities (ld, nm) work better 
than the GNU versions. But "make" doesn't touch the code, it is merely 
an executive that spawns the commands that touch the code. Feel free to 
use whatever version of make with whatever version of binutils. (Of 
course, speaking as a designer / implementor of GNU make, I believe GNU 
make is superior...)

--
 -- Howard Chu
 Chief Architect, Symas Corp.       Director, Highland Sun
 http://www.symas.com               http://highlandsun.com/hyc
 Symas: Premier OpenSource Development and Support