Error when installing CLISP built from source

amoroso

I'm trying to install CLISP from source on my Linux Mint 22.1 Cinnamon system. With the cloned repo under ~/apps/src/clisp I configured the build with:

./configure --prefix=/home/paolo/apps/clisp --with-module=asdf --with-module=clx/new-clx --with-module=editor --with-module=i18n --with-module=pcre --with-module=readline --with-module=regexp --with-module=syscalls --with-module=zlib

After editing config.lisp as advised I ran make which completed with no issues. But make install aborted with a missing rule error:

[...]
checking for wchar.h... (cached) yes
checking for minix/config.h... (cached) no
checking whether it is safe to define __EXTENSIONS__... (cached) yes
checking whether _XOPEN_SOURCE should be defined... (cached) no
checking build system type... (cached) x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
checking host system type... (cached) x86_64-pc-linux-gnu
checking for ld used by gcc... (cached) /usr/bin/ld
checking if the linker (/usr/bin/ld) is GNU ld... (cached) yes
checking for shared library run path origin... (cached) done
checking 32-bit host C ABI... (cached) no
checking for egrep -e... (cached) /usr/bin/grep -E
checking for ELF binary format... (cached) yes
checking for the common suffixes of directories in the library search path... (cached) lib,lib,lib64
checking how to link with libpcre... -lpcre
configure: ** PCRE (Headers)
checking for pcre.h... no
checking for pcre/pcre.h... no
configure: error: cannot find PCRE headers
make[1]: Entering directory '/home/paolo/apps/src/clisp/src/pcre'
make[1]: *** No rule to make target 'clisp-module'.  Stop.
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/paolo/apps/src/clisp/src/pcre'
make: *** [Makefile:2365: pcre] Error 2

Does it ring any bells? Any advice?

marcuskammer

It seems that make cant find the pcre header file from libpcre. Did you install libpcre? On my system (Fedora 43) it is pcre-devel.x86_64. pcre itself is not available in the clisp source directory.

marcus@thinkcentre:~$ dnf info pcre-devel.x86_64
Updating and loading repositories:
Repositories loaded.
Available packages
Name           : pcre-devel
Epoch          : 0
Version        : 8.45
Release        : 1.fc43.9
Architecture   : x86_64
Download size  : 489.5 KiB
Installed size : 1.7 MiB
Source         : pcre-8.45-1.fc43.9.src.rpm
Repository     : fedora
Summary        : Development files for pcre
URL            : https://www.pcre.org/
License        : BSD-3-Clause
Description    : Development files (Headers, libraries for dynamic linking, etc) for pcre.
Vendor         : Fedora Project

amoroso

Thanks, libpcre 2 is installed but maybe I need version 3:

paolo@lispmachine:~$ apt list libpcre*
Listing... Done
libpcre-ocaml-dev/noble 7.5.0-3build1 amd64
libpcre-ocaml/noble 7.5.0-3build1 amd64
libpcre16-3/noble 2:8.39-15build1 amd64
libpcre2-16-0/noble-updates,now 10.42-4ubuntu2.1 amd64 [installed]
libpcre2-16-0/noble-updates 10.42-4ubuntu2.1 i386
libpcre2-32-0/noble-updates,now 10.42-4ubuntu2.1 amd64 [installed]
libpcre2-32-0/noble-updates 10.42-4ubuntu2.1 i386
libpcre2-8-0/noble-updates,now 10.42-4ubuntu2.1 amd64 [installed]
libpcre2-8-0/noble-updates 10.42-4ubuntu2.1 i386
libpcre2-dev/noble-updates,now 10.42-4ubuntu2.1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libpcre2-dev/noble-updates 10.42-4ubuntu2.1 i386
libpcre2-ocaml-dev/noble 7.5.2-1build1 amd64
libpcre2-ocaml/noble 7.5.2-1build1 amd64
libpcre2-posix3/noble-updates,now 10.42-4ubuntu2.1 amd64 [installed,automatic]
libpcre2-posix3/noble-updates 10.42-4ubuntu2.1 i386
libpcre3-dbg/noble 2:8.39-15build1 amd64
libpcre3-dev/noble 2:8.39-15build1 amd64
libpcre32-3/noble 2:8.39-15build1 amd64
libpcre3/noble 2:8.39-15build1 amd64
libpcrecpp0v5/noble 2:8.39-15build1 amd64

amoroso

No I haven't manually edited clisp/modules/pcre/configure, should I replace pcre 1.0 with pcre 2?

marcuskammer

I am not familiar with clisp. But I was able to build and run clisp in a podman container. Here is the containerfile:

FROM linuxmintd/mint22.1-amd64:latest

# Set environment to non-interactive to avoid prompts during apt-get
ENV DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive

# Install all necessary dependencies for building CLISP
# Included additional dependencies (libpcre3-dev, zlib1g-dev, libx11-dev, etc.)
# for the newly requested modules (pcre, zlib, clx/new-clx)
RUN apt-get update && apt-get install -y \
    build-essential \
    automake \
    autoconf \
    m4 \
    libsigsegv-dev \
    libffcall-dev \
    libunistring-dev \
    libreadline-dev \
    libncurses-dev \
    libpcre3-dev \
    zlib1g-dev \
    libx11-dev \
    libxext-dev \
    libxpm-dev \
    git \
    wget \
    curl \
    ca-certificates \
    && rm -rf /var/lib/apt/lists/*

# Set up the working directory
WORKDIR /usr/src

# Clone the official CLISP repository
RUN git clone https://gitlab.com/gnu-clisp/clisp.git

WORKDIR /usr/src/clisp

# Manually run configure, make, and make check to avoid issues with the --cbc helper script.
# FORCE_UNSAFE_CONFIGURE=1 is required because the build runs as root in the container.
RUN FORCE_UNSAFE_CONFIGURE=1 ./configure \
    --with-module=asdf \
    --with-module=clx/new-clx \
    --with-module=editor \
    --with-module=i18n \
    --with-module=pcre \
    --with-module=readline \
    --with-module=regexp \
    --with-module=syscalls \
    --with-module=zlib \
    build-dir

WORKDIR /usr/src/clisp/build-dir
RUN make && make check && make install

# Default command: start the CLISP interactive REPL
CMD ["clisp"]

It based on your system and clisp configuration.

amoroso

Thanks but in the end I just skipped the module pcre as most Common Lisp code uses CL-PPCRE anyway. Now CLISP builds and runs fine.