<html lang="en"> <head> <title>Cygnus Software - Stow</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html"> <meta name="description" content="Stow"> <meta name="generator" content="makeinfo 4.13"> <link title="Top" rel="start" href="index.html#Top"> <link rel="up" href="Compile_002dtime-vs-Install_002dtime.html#Compile_002dtime-vs-Install_002dtime" title="Compile-time vs Install-time"> <link rel="prev" href="Other-FSF-Software.html#Other-FSF-Software" title="Other FSF Software"> <link rel="next" href="Perl-and-Perl-5-Modules.html#Perl-and-Perl-5-Modules" title="Perl and Perl 5 Modules"> <link href="http://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/" rel="generator-home" title="Texinfo Homepage"> <!-- This manual describes GNU Stow version 2.2.2 (9 November 2015), a program for managing the installation of software packages. Software and documentation is copyrighted by the following: (C) 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996 Bob Glickstein <bobg+stow@zanshin.com> (C) 2000, 2001 Guillaume Morin <gmorin@gnu.org> (C) 2007 Kahlil (Kal) Hodgson <kahlil@internode.on.net> (C) 2011 Adam Spiers <stow@adamspiers.org> Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided also that the section entitled ``GNU General Public License'' is included with the modified manual, and provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one. Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation approved by the Free Software Foundation. --> <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css"> <style type="text/css"><!-- pre.display { font-family:inherit } pre.format { font-family:inherit } pre.smalldisplay { font-family:inherit; font-size:smaller } pre.smallformat { font-family:inherit; font-size:smaller } pre.smallexample { font-size:smaller } pre.smalllisp { font-size:smaller } span.sc { font-variant:small-caps } span.roman { font-family:serif; font-weight:normal; } span.sansserif { font-family:sans-serif; font-weight:normal; } --></style> </head> <body> <div class="node"> <a name="Cygnus-Software"></a> <p> Next: <a rel="next" accesskey="n" href="Perl-and-Perl-5-Modules.html#Perl-and-Perl-5-Modules">Perl and Perl 5 Modules</a>, Previous: <a rel="previous" accesskey="p" href="Other-FSF-Software.html#Other-FSF-Software">Other FSF Software</a>, Up: <a rel="up" accesskey="u" href="Compile_002dtime-vs-Install_002dtime.html#Compile_002dtime-vs-Install_002dtime">Compile-time vs Install-time</a> <hr> </div> <h3 class="section">12.4 Cygnus Software</h3> <p>Cygnus is a commercial supplier and supporter of GNU software. It has also written several of its own packages, released under the terms of the GNU General Public License; and it has taken over the maintenance of other packages. Among the packages released by Cygnus are ‘<samp><span class="samp">gdb</span></samp>’, ‘<samp><span class="samp">gnats</span></samp>’, and ‘<samp><span class="samp">dejagnu</span></samp>’. <p>Cygnus packages have the peculiarity that each one unpacks into a directory tree with a generic top-level Makefile, which is set up to compile <em>all</em> of Cygnus' packages, any number of which may reside under the top-level directory. In other words, even if you're only building ‘<samp><span class="samp">gnats</span></samp>’, the top-level Makefile will look for, and try to build, <samp><span class="file">gdb</span></samp> and <samp><span class="file">dejagnu</span></samp> subdirectories, among many others. <p>The result is that if you try ‘<samp><span class="samp">make -n install prefix=/usr/local/stow/</span><var>package</var></samp>’ at the top level of a Cygnus package, you'll get a bewildering amount of output. It will then be very difficult to visually scan the output to see whether the install will proceed correctly. Unfortunately, it's not always clear how to invoke an install from the subdirectory of interest. <p>In cases like this, the best approach is to run your ‘<samp><span class="samp">make install prefix=...</span></samp>’, but be ready to interrupt it if you detect that it is recompiling files. Usually it will work just fine; otherwise, install manually. <!-- --> </body></html>