Analysis +of OSS

Installing +Linux packages in Linux

Get the latest stable release of OSS from the Internet. Usually OSS +come a in compressed format like .tar, .gz, +or bz2.
Run the configure script using the following command: ./configure. +It will look for dependency and creates makefiles.
Compile the code using make tool.
Copy the files to the target path using the command make install.

Directory analysis

OSS +creates the following three subdirectories in the installation directory: include, lib, +and bin. These directories contain valuable information +required for porting, as explained below:

include – This directory contains the user +include files that need to be exported to the proper export directory in Symbian +platform.
lib – This directory gives an idea of the +size of the library. It contains libraries built as a result of OSS compilation. +Each of these requires an individual MMP file.
Symbian platform +compilers produce much smaller-sized libraries than what there are in Linux. + + + +
Linux
+
Symbian platform
+ + +
.SO extension for dynamic libraries
+
.DLL extension for dynamic libraries
+ + +
.A extension for static libraries
+
.LIB extension for static libraries
+ + + +
bin – This directory contains the executable +built during the compilation of OSS.
man – This directory contains the man pages +of OSS.

Tips and tools

Tools +like nm, ldd, and dumpbin are +useful in OSS porting:

ldd – A Linux tool that can be used to find +the dependency library list and overall size of the library, obtained by adding +the size of all the dependent libraries. In many cases, to build library 'X' +another library 'Y' is needed.
nm – Another Linux tool that prints the symbol +table in alphabetical order from one or more object files.
dumpbin – A Windows-based tool that can be +used if Windows port is available for OSS. It gets the list of exported symbols.

The following command can be used to install the software in the user +directory:

./configure --prefix=$HOME/<foo>

The +following commands can be used to decompress the file:

tar -xvjf archivefile.tar.bz2 +tar -zxvf archivefile.tar.bz2

At the end of installing the OSS +in Linux, it is good to update the environment variables PKG_CONFIG_PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH. +One of the many ways to initialize environment variables is to add them in +the .bash_rc file.

Makefile gives subtle information +about the project. SOURCES in Makefile gives an idea about +the source files of the OSS. These files have to be listed in SOURCE in +the MMP file.

-D<Foo> in Makefile gives the list +of preprocessor declarations. These preprocessor declarations can be done +using MACRO in the MMP file.