[dia] cannot compile : configure: error: perl not found; required for intltool

[Brian Flaherty]

On Fri, Jun 20, 2008 at 01:59:42PM +0200, Damien Clauzel wrote:
> Hi,
>
> On Leopard, with everything up to date :
...
> ___
> $ port install dia
> --->  Configuring dia
...
> ___
>
> So perl is present, but configure fails. Any idea on how to solve this ?

This looks a lot like problems I was having on my laptop.  If you go
to the dia directory (cd `port dir dia`, I think) and look at the
config.log.  What are the paths?  In my case, PREFIX was not being
handled correctly and appeared in the config.log.  My guess is that it
should have been /opt/local/.

One thing I did just to get things installed, was to do it by hand.
This is my recollection of how:

- change to the work directory for dia
- look at the Portfile for dia to see if there are any configure
  arguments  (I just looked at it and there are a fair number of
  arguments and I don't know where they all go.  Also, there's a patch
  file to apply, and I'm not sure I know how to do that by hand.)
- run sudo ./configure --configure-args-from-portfile
- run sudo make
- run sudo make install

This worked for me several times.  However, I got sick of doing it
after a while.  I could not find the source of the problem.  (There
are past messages to MacPorts Users list from me on these problems.)
For several reasons, I ended up formatting the disk and reinstalling
Leopard.  (I had upgraded from Tiger to Leopard, not re-formatted and
installed Leopard on a clean drive before.)  I haven't had the problem
since.

xfig is a very good drawing program, if you don't mind the X-windows
interface.

Brian