[Gretl-users] Re: More on building gretl on Linux

[Gordon Hughes]

A. The problem with the undefined symbol.

I did have g77 installed, but removing it did not solve the 
problem.  I tried installing a different version of Atlas - following 
the note on matrix arithmetic - but that just produced the same error 
referring to a different library.  In the end, I had to remove Atlas 
altogether - together with other libraries that depend upon it.  Now, 
the NIST test script runs properly.  I may trying adding Atlas back - 
cautiously - but the extra speed isn't that important for me. So - 
beware Atlas under Ubuntu.

B.  Files in the wrong place

My path - on both Ubuntu & OpenSUSE - does include /usr/local/bin.  I 
don't know about ldconfig, but you are correct in identifying the 
file ~/.gretl2rc as the source of the problem, though because it is 
being wrongly created rather than because it is a stale version.
As a test I cleaned every vestige of gretl off my OpenSUSE system and 
emptied the trash.  Then I recompiled gretl from scratch with the 
default options. Finally, I ran gretl - exactly the same problem as 
before : the program looks for files in /usr/share/gretl/ rather than 
/usr/local/share/gretl/.  I checked the contents of .gret2rc and this 
contains the following lines at the top

# gretl config file
# Main gretl directory
gretldir = /usr/share/gretl/

I assume that gretldir should be /usr/local/share/gretl/.  If I 
delete just .gretl2rc and try again, the re-created version is 
identical.  At this point I am stuck, though it is no inconvenience 
to compile gretl with the prefix option to force everything to go in 
the same place.

Gordon

 > Thank you for the advice on dealing with the undefined symbol in
 > Ubuntu and the pointer to the discussion of Atlas, etc.  I will
 > experiment with alternative versions to the libraries to see
 > what works best.

OK, we'd be interested to hear what you find.

 > On the first point, I have identified that the following types
 > of file can't be located with the default installation: (a) help
 > files (this warning comes up when the program loads), (b) gretl
 > logo in Help/About dialogue, (c) sample data files (File/Open
 > data/Sample file) and database (File/Databases/Gretl native),
 > and (d) sample script files (File/Script files/Practice file)...

Delete (or edit) ~/.gretl2rc and try again.  I strongly suspect
you have a stale personal gretl config file in place that is
pointing to the wrong location for gretl's shared files.