setenv... where is it??

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Sun, 25 Jun 2006, Ric Moore wrote:

> On Sat, 2006-06-24 at 17:23 +1000, Michael Fleming wrote:
>> On Sat, 2006-06-24 at 02:43 -0400, Ric Moore wrote:
>>> I'm compiling a program from a tarball and the ./configure process
>>> claims:
>>> checking for getuid... yes
>>> checking for mempcpy... yes
>>> checking for munmap... yes
>>> checking for putenv... no
>>> checking for setenv... no
>>>
>>>
>>> I've got the man pages, so I would think it's installed. But apparently
>>> it is not. So I: yum install glibc*  ...and here's the fun part!
>>[...]
>>
>> "yum install glibc-devel" and you should be set.
>
> [root at iam  rpm -q glibc-devel
> glibc-devel-2.4-8
>
> Got it already... yum told me it had nothing to do when I tried
> installing it like that. So I tried this:
> [root at iam rpm -q --whatprovides setenv
> no package provides setenv

rpm operates off of a database.  Installed RPMs add their "provides" 
entries and other RPMs query for specific entires.  It's all 
packager-defined and there is no guarantee that one packager called a 
feature the same thing as another packager (other than distro convention). 
In the case of setenv(3), no packager would think to mention it explicitly 
as it is part of glibc.

>
> Jeez! It really seems to be missing, but locate finds a pile of
> documentation for it installed. Beats the hell outa me. If the doc gets
> installed, shouldn't the programs be installed too?? Must be a bug or an
> omission. I would like to know about this. :) Ric

$ rpm -qf /usr/share/man/man3/setenv.3.gz
man-pages-2.21-1

So that explains why there's a man page.  In what way does it "really seem 
to be missing"?  What test did you perform to check?

What happens when you compile and link this little program.

#include <stdlib.h>
#include <stdio.h>
int main(void)
{
    setenv("FOO", "BAR", 1);
    printf("%s\n", getenv("FOO"));

    return 0;
}


-- 
 		Matthew Saltzman

Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu
http://www.math.clemson.edu/~mjs