Re: octave vs tigervnc fltk battle

[Ramiro Aceves <ea1abz%gmail.com@localhost>]

En Sat, Nov 07, 2026 at 07:26:44AM +0100, Greg Troxel escribió:
> > Is a bug that should me fixed in pkgsrc?
> 
> Well, it's a pile of bugs, some blend of things, each of which I have no
> idea if it's true:
> 
>   - 1) fltk should have good enough compat that maintained programs don't
>     need to use old versions
>   - 2) tigervnc upstream should have a release that works with the most
>     recent release of fltk
> 
> and
> 
>   - 3) Perhaps pkgsrc should allow installing two versions of fltk, but
>     that's a lot of work, and ick imposed on the system.  It's not clear
>     it's worth it, only that nobody has done it.
> 
> 


Hello Greg,

I appreciate very much your detailed (as you always provide) explanations. Thanks for your time an effort teaching all of us.

FLTK latest stable release upstream is  1.4.5

https://www.fltk.org/software.php?VERSION=1.4.5#v1.4.5

pkgsrc2026Q3 has two fltk versions that are told to conflict eath other in their Makefiles:

fltk-1.4.5nb1     
fltk13-1.3.11nb2   

TigerVNC upstream stable version is 1.16.2
https://github.com/TigerVNC/tigervnc/releases/tag/v1.16.2

pkgsrc2026Q3 tigervnc is tigervnc-1.16.2.20260506nb1 and  is compiled against fltk13. Github upstream site says:

================================
Build requirements (all systems)
================================

....

-- FLTK 1.3.3 or later

...

So I understood that "1.3.3 or later" could be satisfied with 1.4.5.

I tried to compile pkgsrc2026Q3 tigervnc against fltk (1.4.5) tweaking pkgsrc Makefile changing

.include "../../x11/fltk13/buildlink3.mk"

to

.include "../../x11/fltk/buildlink3.mk"

but CMakeLists.txt file it has a FLTK check line tha complains if FLTK 1.4.5 is used:

check_cxx_source_compiles("#include <FL/Fl.H>\n#if FL_MAJOR_VERSION != 1 || FL_MINOR_VERSION != 3\n#error Wrong FLTK version\n#endif\nint main(int, char**) { return 0; }" OK_FLTK_VERSION)

I tried to trick the compilation tweaking it to 

check_cxx_source_compiles("#include <FL/Fl.H>\n#if FL_MAJOR_VERSION != 1 || FL_MINOR_VERSION != 4\n#error Wrong FLTK version\n#endif\nint main(int, char**) { return 0; }" OK_FLTK_VERSION

to allow 1.4.5 to start compilation.

That allowed compiling almost till the end but it failed at 95% of compiling....

[ 95%] Building CXX object unix/x0vncserver/CMakeFiles/x0vncserver.dir/XDesktop.cxx.o
[ 95%] Building CXX object vncviewer/CMakeFiles/vncviewer.dir/GestureHandler.cxx.o
In file included from /usr/pkgsrc/net/tigervnc/work/tigervnc-84e930679d831bcf51d5f95733689ada68dfd52a/vncviewer/vncviewer.cxx:70:
/usr/pkgsrc/net/tigervnc/work/tigervnc-84e930679d831bcf51d5f95733689ada68dfd52a/vncviewer/touch.h:26:23: error: 'Window' was not declared in this scope
   26 | bool x11_grab_pointer(Window window);
      |                       ^~~~~~
/usr/pkgsrc/net/tigervnc/work/tigervnc-84e930679d831bcf51d5f95733689ada68dfd52a/vncviewer/touch.h:27:6: error: variable or field 'x11_ungrab_pointer' declared void
   27 | void x11_ungrab_pointer(Window window);
      |      ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
/usr/pkgsrc/net/tigervnc/work/tigervnc-84e930679d831bcf51d5f95733689ada68dfd52a/vncviewer/touch.h:27:25: error: 'Window' was not declared in this scope
   27 | void x11_ungrab_pointer(Window window);
      |                         ^~~~~~
/usr/pkgsrc/net/tigervnc/work/tigervnc-84e930679d831bcf51d5f95733689ada68dfd52a/vncviewer/vncviewer.cxx: In function 'int main(int, char**)':
/usr/pkgsrc/net/tigervnc/work/tigervnc-84e930679d831bcf51d5f95733689ada68dfd52a/vncviewer/vncviewer.cxx:717:3: error: 'fl_open_display' was not declared in this scope
  717 |   fl_open_display();
      |   ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
[ 95%] Building C object unix/x0vncserver/CMakeFiles/x0vncserver.dir/RandrGlue.c.o
[ 96%] Building CXX object unix/x0vncserver/CMakeFiles/x0vncserver.dir/XSelection.cxx.o
[ 96%] Building CXX object unix/x0vncserver/CMakeFiles/x0vncserver.dir/__/vncconfig/QueryConnectDialog.cxx.o
gmake[2]: *** [vncviewer/CMakeFiles/vncviewer.dir/build.make:373: vncviewer/CMakeFiles/vncviewer.dir/vncviewer.cxx.o] Error 1
gmake[2]: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs....
gmake[1]: *** [CMakeFiles/Makefile2:1118: vncviewer/CMakeFiles/vncviewer.dir/all] Error 2
gmake[1]: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs....
[ 97%] Linking CXX executable x0vncserver
[ 97%] Built target x0vncserver
gmake: *** [Makefile:136: all] Error 2
*** Error code 2

Stop.
make[1]: stopped making "replace" in /usr/pkgsrc/net/tigervnc
*** Error code 1

And I abandoned the idea :-(


As there are other interesting programas like FLDIGI for the radio amateur, that it is compiled against fltk13 so I think that if I get tigervnc work with fltk 1.4.5 will break also FLDIGI that needs fltk13.

netbsd-nuc# pkgin show-rev-deps fltk13
local reverse dependency tree for fltk13-1.3.11nb2
	tigervnc-1.16.2.20260506nb1
	fldigi-4.1.01nb42


So I tried another thing, compiling octave against fltk13 instead fltk (1.4.5) changing the Makefile to use

.include "../../x11/fltk13/buildlink3.mk"

instead of

.include "../../x11/fltk/buildlink3.mk"



netbsd-nuc# pkg_info octave | grep fltk
fltk13>=1.3.11nb2<1.4.0
netbsd-nuc# 

It compiles and works fine, at least it fixes my situation. But the proper fix seems difficult. If other programs trigger the installation of FLTK 1.4.5 will break tigervnc.


Regards.

Ramiro.