gnome-doc-utils is missing db2omf - SOLVED

[Michael Crawford]

> On Thu, Feb 5, 2009 at 12:59 PM, Michael Crawford <mdcrawford at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I can't build gnucash because gnome-doc-utils won't build.  It won't
>> build because db2omf isn't installed, and I can't figure out which
>> port it should be in.

It turns out I was looking at the wrong error message.  Here is the right one:

Making all in doc
Making all in gnome-doc-make
Unknown option: n
Usage: head [-options] <url>...

That is, the command "head -n" is being given in the build, but the
head command says it doesn't accept  a -n argument.

This was confusing, because "man head" said that it does - and I've
used the head command for decades.  It prints out the beginning of a
file, with the number of lines to display being given by the -n
argument.

Well I finally got around to examining /usr/bin/head, and discovering
that it was a Perl script, and not a binary as I expected.  And it
turns out to be some kind of HTTP utility.

There was no head in MacPorts yet, so after again looking it up in the
Debian package contents search, I installed the coreutils port.  But
that installed ghead, not head.

Googling for:

   "mac os x" /usr/bin/head

Turned up the culprit, as explained in Brad Rice's blog:

   /usr/bin/head and perl lwp
   http://www.bradrice.com/wposx/archives/95

His blog links to this post by Ken Williams:

   http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20010603142727786&query=perl+HEAD

A Perl CPAN package called LWP tries to install a command called
/usr/bin/HEAD - uppercase "HEAD", but because HFS+ is by default
case-insensitive, it ends up overwriting the lowercase /usr/bin/head.

HFS+ preserves filename cases, but you can't have to files with the
same spelling in the same directory, even if their cases are
different!

LWP is some kind of automated HTTP client; I installed it a while back
to enable the generation of RSS feeds for my blog, which is just a
bunch of static HTML files, rather than being implemented by some kind
of web application software.  I have a Perl script that downloads my
homepage and looks for new blog entries in it, then generates my RSS.
I upload the RSS file to my site with scp.

Both Brad Rice and Ken Williams recommend getting the /usr/bin/head
from your OS X install DVD, but what I did was after installing the
coreutils port, I copied /opt/local/bin/ghead to /usr/bin/head.  It
seems to work fine now.

And I got gnome-doc-utils to install!

Back to building gnucash.

Ever Faithful,

Mike
-- 
Michael David Crawford
mdcrawford at gmail dot com

   I'm looking for a job in Silicon Valley:
     http://www.goingware.com/resume/cover-letter.html