On Sun, 30 Nov 1997, Paul Whiting wrote:

> The thing I want to compile is at
> http://alife.santafe.edu/alife/software/polyworld.html if anyone feels like
> having a look at it. 'Make' on its own said that it didn't know how to make
> '/usr/local/include/cc/lib.h.'.

I think you are going to have trouble. Reading the README tells you to
type 'make depend' and then 'make', but without much further ado, it
appears that this is not truely portable C++ - polyworld is intended to
Silicon Graphics machines running IRIX 3.2 or later. I suspect that you
are either going to have to produce a SGI library running under RiscBSD or
get an SGI alas.

It's an easy mistake to make - just because the code is C, or Fortran, or
whatever, does not necessarly make it portable - it's very easy to tie
code in to particular libraries which are only available on limited
platforms.

Usually when faced with a program to compile for the first time, the
first course of action is to read (or even print out and read) the
documentation. Secondly, if someone has already sorted out a compilation
option for your machine, make sure it is activated by uncommenting the
necessary files in config.h or similar files as directed by the
documentation. If there are no options for your machine, you are probably
best off playing around with some of the generic options and seeing what
is needed in the way of libraries, paths to libraries and others. 

If you want to try a few programs for compilation, I suggest you play with
something like Angband, which has a large and fairly complete set of
docs, or xpilot, both of which I believe have been ported to RiscBSD? If
not, I'll have a play when I finally get RiscBSD up on my machine (my hard
drives are too small at the moment - a mere 2x 210Mb - this is being
rectified :-) )

At the end of the day, there is nothing like experience :-) Try it and
see.

Cheers,
	Toby

_______________________________________________________________________
Toby Haynes       | "Alarm clock? Oh, you mean the sad pile of
Rm 965, MRAO      |  cogs and twisted springs under that dent
Uni. of Cambridge |  in the wall?"