[Gretl-users] Linux versions of gretl

[Allin Cottrell]

On Sun, 27 May 2007, Gordon Hughes wrote:

> As a newcomer, I apologise if this e-mail raises an issue that 
> has been settled in the past.  My query or suggestion concerns 
> the possibility of providing a statically linked version of 
> gretl for Linux.  [The Windows & Mac versions are necessarily 
> statically linked because it cannot be assumed that users have 
> the necessary dlls.] The query is prompted by two 
> considerations...

In fact, the Windows and Mac versions are not statically linked -- 
what happens is that the gretl binaries are distributed in a big 
package that includes all the necessary shared libraries (or at 
least, all the libraries that are in any way non-standard).  

I have thought about trying to do this for Linux too, but I think 
a better way would be to make a determined effort to overcome the 
remaining problems with certain libraries, in particular 
lapack/blas and libpng.  I've heard of several people having 
problems with undefined symbols relating to the fortran library
when linking to lapack.  I'm also aware of issues with libpng (a 
very useful library which is unfortunately a horrid mess in regard 
to its versioning).  It _should_ be possible to work around these 
things.  (Though I'm not ruling out the other approach if it's 
really needed.)

> Even popular distributions such as Ubuntu and SimplyMEPIS have 
> libraries that are not compatible with the most recent versions 
> of gretl...

Hmm, I've been able to build gretl on Ubuntu 6.10 and 7.04 without 
doing anything fancy (just installing the runtime and devel 
packages for everything that's needed).  

> B.  Just yesterday, I encountered a different version of the 
> same problem.  I have decided to use Suse Linux for my main 
> systems - in particular Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop 
> (SLED) which is generally compatible with OpenSuse 10.1 & 10.2.  
> I tried to install gretl 1.6.5 and failed because it could not 
> resolve the dependency for libpng12.so.0 (a PNG graphics 
> library). 

Do you mean you tried building gretl, or using the rpm from the 
gretl website?  

Allin.