As a followup: https://github.com/pure-data/pure-data/blob/master/INSTALL.txt#L165 https://github.com/pure-data/pure-data/blob/master/INSTALL.txt#L165

All other steps are very common for the autotools/make paradigm which is explained, more or less, step by step for beginners in the INSTALL.txt.

However, I do recognize the fact that most people don't "read the manual" and just ./configure && make. This is great and I'm glad the whole autotools work is making things easier and more people are building Pd themselves. I can see the need for at least some sort of prompt to better suggest what the problem would be.

Following Antoine's suggestion, we'll add warning print via https://github.com/pure-data/pure-data/pull/508 https://github.com/pure-data/pure-data/pull/508:

checking for jack_set_xrun_callback in -ljack... no checking for jack_set_error_function in -ljack... no configure: WARNING: JACK development files not found... skipping (See INSTALL.txt)

There is a similar pain point when missing the ALSA dev libraries, so we might want to rework the configure script to fail with an error message on Linux unless --disable-alsa is used. Maybe something like:

checking for snd_pcm_info in -lasound... no configure: ERROR: ALSA development files not found... stopping (See INSTALL.txt)

On Oct 5, 2018, at 3:50 AM, pd-list-request@lists.iem.at wrote:

From: Max <abonnements@revolwear.com mailto:abonnements@revolwear.com> To: pd-list@lists.iem.at mailto:pd-list@lists.iem.at Subject: Re: [PD] trouble enabling Jack on Ubuntu compile Message-ID: <1e8afe88-b1fd-5121-a48c-98163745db2c@revolwear.com mailto:1e8afe88-b1fd-5121-a48c-98163745db2c@revolwear.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed

On 04.10.2018 21:59, IOhannes m zmölnig wrote:

...

On 10/4/18 6:19 PM, Max wrote:

...

This is a reoccurring issue/confusion, maybe there is a way that the configure gives a better hint at what's missing? Or abort if libjack-jack2-dev ist not present when --enable-jack is set (with a proper error message)?

or put it into the documentation, like INSTALL.txt? oh no, wait, it's already there.

Ouch!

Dan Wilcox @danomatika http://twitter.com/danomatika danomatika.com http://danomatika.com/ robotcowboy.com http://robotcowboy.com/