A couple of weeks ago I needed to install some open source utilities and libraries on a Solaris 10 SPARC server for an AMP (Apache, MySQL, PHP) project.
I needed ImageMagick, a bitmap image manipulation tool. This was the easy part since a binary distribution exists for Solaris 10 SPARC. Download, unzip, untar...voila ! One good thing done.
Next I needed Sharedance to manage the PHP sessions and also the GD library which allows programmers to dynamically create images. No binary distribution for those, so let the thrill of building from source begin.
The usual thing: download the sources, untar, and go through the three famous steps : configure / make / make install
First thing to remember when working with open source applications on Solaris 10: you're much better off using the gnu tools /usr/sfw/bin/gtar (vs. /usr/bin/tar) and gmake (vs. /usr/ccs/bin/make).
Most of the times using the default tar and make works, but if you want to stay out of trouble in all cases, you now know what to do !
I was about to build when suddenly I thought of checking if this didn't already come with Coolstack 1.3 (never know. If it can avoid me a build...) and bingo !
First lesson learned: Forget the old reflex of rushing to build from source because of the “it doesn't come with a Solaris 10 binary” syndrome.
There are actually a lot of tools in CSKphplibsbundle which has optional libraries for PHP5 extensions. This bundle includes :
-
CSKphplibs : curl, fontconfig, freetype, gd, gdbm,gettext, gmp, imap, unixODBC, tidy
-
CSKtds: FreeTDS
-
CSKncurses: ncurses library
Finally all was set on my Solaris 10
without too much hassle.
Remember that the Coolstack is now
replaced by the Sun
GlassFish web stack 1.4. The good news is that it doesn't change
my point: If you need a component often used in the web development,
first check the Web Stack before going the hard way.
Just by curiosity I took a look on my own laptop running OpenSolaris 2008.11 just to check the assertion that you get a more “out of the box” experience with OpenSolaris.
Checking my package manager, to my surprise the Event library that I had to download/build/install on Solaris 10, was just there and already installed. I also found the GD library and ImageMagik in the Blastwave repository. So yes, out of the box I had everything needed on OpenSolaris.
