[Lazarus] Files not found when rebuilding the IDE

[hdv@gmail]

Hi Mattias,

Thanks for helping!

>> After a couple of years away I am trying to pick up Lazarus again. Have
>> to admit I seem to have lost a lot of the things I was at least somewhat
>> knowledgeable in. Ah, well, I keep on trying...
>>
>> One of those things has to do with rebuilding the IDe after adding
>> components. There's two things I can't seem to grasp.
>>
>> The first has to do with lpk files. I'd like to add AnchorDocking, but
>> when I look in /usr/lib/lazarus/1.2.4/components/anchordocking/design I
>> do not see a lpk file. Am I missing something? Or is my version of
>> Lazarus not complete? 
> 
> There should be a file 
> /usr/lib/lazarus/1.2.4/components/anchordocking/design/anchordockingdsgn.lpk
> otherwise it is incomplete.

OK. In that case my install is incomplete. As a matter of fact I tried
two installs now. First I tried the "official" package from Debian
(testing) and after that I tried the procedures from the wiki
(http://wiki.lazarus.freepascal.org/Lazarus_release_version_for_Ubuntu)

Both had the same problem: missing lpk files.

>> I am using lazarus as installed by the package
>> manger on a current Debian testing system.
> 
> You might want to try the debian packages on our sourceforge page:
> 
> http://sourceforge.net/projects/lazarus/files/Lazarus%20Linux%20amd64%20DEB/Lazarus%201.2.6/

Will do that. This is not an AMD64 system, so I've downloaded the i386
debs. Will install those this weekend.

>> The other thing pops up when I want to rebuild the IDE. Building project
>> is no problem (well, that is for the simple projects I tried 'til now).
>> I get an error that the file staticpackages.inc can not be found. It
>> does however exist in my ~/.lazarus directory and has proper rights. So
>> I am thinking paths. But what path do I need to configure in the options
>> dialog?
> 
> The IDE generates a file ~/.lazarus/idemake.cfg on every IDE build.
> That should contain the include path (-Fi/home/user/.lazarus) as last
> line.
> Does it?

I checked (after reading your mail), and yes it does.

>> I found some article on the problem with Linux systems and the
>> impossibility of writing outside of your own home directory and thought
>> it might have to do something with that.
> 
> That is a security feature and existed since the beginning of time.
> System wide programs are installed outside the users home directories.
> For example in /usr/lib/lazarus/.
> You can install Lazarus either system wide or only for your user. You
> can install multiple versions at various places.
> When you install your own packages the IDE has to create some new files
> and put them into ~/.lazarus/bin. This creates your own custom IDE.

OK. Knew about the Linux specifics (been a user/admin for almost 2
decades now). But was not sure about the lazarus way of doing things. I
did find the ~/.lazarus directory. That's way I knew for sure
staticpackages.inc did exist and was accessible.

>> So I tried "startlazarus', but
>> that does not seem to change anything (as far as I can see). The error
>> message about still pops up.
> 
> startlazarus is just a wrapper that checks if you have your own
> custom IDE and starts that instead of the system wide.
> It has no effect on the building itself.

Ah. Good to know. Was thinking maybe it did set some additional paths
etc. But have to admit I did not check startlazarus itself out. Just
used it to start the IDE and see if that solved my problem.

Thanks for the pointers. I am going to remove the package manager
version and install the version from sourceforge. See if that solves things.

Grx HdV