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<h3 class="section" id="Cygnus-Software-1"><span>12.4 Cygnus Software<a class="copiable-link" href="#Cygnus-Software-1"> ¶</a></span></h3>
<p>Cygnus is a commercial supplier and supporter of GNU software. It has
also written several of its own packages, released under the terms of
the GNU General Public License; and it has taken over the maintenance of
other packages. Among the packages released by Cygnus are ‘<samp class="samp">gdb</samp>’,
‘<samp class="samp">gnats</samp>’, and ‘<samp class="samp">dejagnu</samp>’.
</p>
<p>Cygnus packages have the peculiarity that each one unpacks into a
directory tree with a generic top-level Makefile, which is set up to
compile <em class="emph">all</em> of Cygnus’ packages, any number of which may reside
under the top-level directory. In other words, even if you’re only
building ‘<samp class="samp">gnats</samp>’, the top-level Makefile will look for, and try to
build, <samp class="file">gdb</samp> and <samp class="file">dejagnu</samp> subdirectories, among many others.
</p>
<p>The result is that if you try ‘<samp class="samp">make -n install
prefix=/usr/local/stow/<var class="var">package</var></samp>’ at the top level of a Cygnus
package, you’ll get a bewildering amount of output. It will then be
very difficult to visually scan the output to see whether the install
will proceed correctly. Unfortunately, it’s not always clear how to
invoke an install from the subdirectory of interest.
</p>
<p>In cases like this, the best approach is to run your ‘<samp class="samp">make install
prefix=<span class="r">…</span></samp>’, but be ready to interrupt it if you detect that it
is recompiling files. Usually it will work just fine; otherwise,
install manually.
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