Build problems on FreeBSD with flex

[Barry Pederson <bp...@barryp.org>]

Gregory (Grisha) Trubetskoy wrote:
> I think that the diminished activity on bug reporting on this and the
> other python lists indicates that the latest cvs could be tagged and
> released as 3.1.3 stable.
> 
> So if you have any objections, speak up now.

Here's something else...I just fetched httpd-python using CVS, followed 
the instructions in the README for building by running

    ./configure --with-apxs=/usr/local/sbin/apxs
    make

But the make dies with:

-----------
/usr/local/bin/flex -R -opsp_parser.c --header-file=include/psp_flex.h 
psp_parser.l
/usr/local/bin/flex: not found
*** Error code 127

Stop in /root/httpd-python/src.
*** Error code 1

Stop in /root/httpd-python/dist.
*** Error code 1

Stop in /root/httpd-python.
------------

Any chance of having configure locate flex for you, rather than having 
it hardcoded in?

On a FreeBSD box, flex is in /usr/bin - but if I symlink 
/usr/local/bin/flex to /usr/bin/flex, make then dies with:

-----------
/usr/local/bin/flex -R -opsp_parser.c --header-file=include/psp_flex.h 
psp_parser.l
/usr/local/bin/flex: unknown flag 'R'.  For usage, try
         /usr/local/bin/flex --help
-----------

I see a comment in the httpd-python/src/Makefile

    # requires flex 2.5.31 for reentrant support

but FreeBSD 5.2 and 4.8 only seem to have 2.5.4, and I don't see
any ports that offer a newer version.  So it doesn't seem like 
mod_python 3.1.x is going to play well with the FreeBSD ports system at 
the moment.  I'd imagine the README would have to tell FreeBSD users to 
build and install a newer flex by hand unless there's a way to get 
around needing reentrancy :(

How about a configure option to skip support for psp pages (and the need 
for flex), so we could do something like "./configure --disable-psp" if 
need be?

	Barry