Installing erlang from tar resulting in errors, wondering how to specify folders

Question

I had the inspiration to start messing around with Erlang and I am having problems installing it... I am using Linux Mint 16 (petra). I installed the dependencies, and then downloaded otp_src_17.1.tar.gz and ran 'tar -zxf otp_src_17.1.tar.gz' I then ran ./configure which gave me some errors that made it impossible to run make.

These are the errors I'm getting (actually what I did was I did ./configure > configure.txt to get all the lines it prints as it configures, and it conveniently still printed to the console everything that has errors - neat)

configure: WARNING: No odbc library found skipping odbc
configure: WARNING: "ODBC library - header check failed"
configure: WARNING: "ODBC library - link check failed"
rm: remove write-protected regular file './CONF_INFO'? 
configure: WARNING: No GLU headers found, wx will NOT be usable
/home/core/Desktop/otp_src_17.1/lib/wx/./configure: line 5195: wx-config: command not found
/home/core/Desktop/otp_src_17.1/lib/wx/./configure: line 5893: ./CONF_INFO: Permission denied
configure: WARNING:
                wxWidgets must be installed on your system.

        Please check that wx-config is in path, the directory
        where wxWidgets libraries are installed (returned by
        'wx-config --libs' or 'wx-config --static --libs' command)
        is in LD_LIBRARY_PATH or equivalent variable and
        wxWidgets version is 2.8.4 or above.
rm: remove write-protected regular file 'doc/CONF_INFO'? 
/home/core/Desktop/otp_src_17.1/erts/configure: line 6466: doc/CONF_INFO: Permission denied
configure: WARNING: No 'xsltproc' command found: the documentation cannot be built
/home/core/Desktop/otp_src_17.1/erts/configure: line 6513: doc/CONF_INFO: Permission denied
configure: WARNING: No 'fop' command found: going to generate placeholder PDF files

configure: error: No curses library functions found
configure: error: /bin/bash '/home/core/Desktop/otp_src_17.1/erts/configure' failed for erts

The thing is - I know that I have the ncurses library, as evidenced by the fact that when I do "sudo apt-get install ncurses-base ncurses-bin" it says:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
ncurses-base is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded.

When I run "locate ncurses" it gives me the following:

/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libncurses.so.5
/lib/i386-linux-gnu/libncurses.so.5.9
/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libncurses.so.5
/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libncurses.so.5.9
/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libncursesw.so.5
/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libncursesw.so.5.9
/usr/bin/ncurses5-config
/usr/bin/ncursesw5-config
/usr/lib/vlc/plugins/gui/libncurses_plugin.so
/usr/share/doc/libncurses5
/usr/share/doc/libncursesw5
/usr/share/doc/ncurses-base
/usr/share/doc/ncurses-bin
/usr/share/doc/ncurses-base/changelog.Debian.gz
/usr/share/doc/ncurses-base/copyright
/usr/share/doc/ncurses-bin/FAQ
/usr/share/doc/ncurses-bin/changelog.Debian.gz
/usr/share/doc/ncurses-bin/copyright
/usr/share/lintian/overrides/ncurses-base
/usr/share/man/man1/ncurses5-config.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/ncursesw5-config.1.gz
/var/cache/apt/archives/libncurses5_5.9+20130608-1ubuntu1_i386.deb
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libncurses5:amd64.list
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libncurses5:amd64.md5sums
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libncurses5:amd64.postinst
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libncurses5:amd64.postrm
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libncurses5:amd64.shlibs
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libncurses5:amd64.symbols
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libncurses5:i386.list
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libncurses5:i386.md5sums
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libncurses5:i386.postinst
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libncurses5:i386.postrm
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libncurses5:i386.shlibs
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libncurses5:i386.symbols
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libncursesw5:amd64.list
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libncursesw5:amd64.md5sums
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libncursesw5:amd64.postinst
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libncursesw5:amd64.postrm
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libncursesw5:amd64.shlibs
/var/lib/dpkg/info/libncursesw5:amd64.symbols
/var/lib/dpkg/info/ncurses-base.conffiles
/var/lib/dpkg/info/ncurses-base.list
/var/lib/dpkg/info/ncurses-base.md5sums
/var/lib/dpkg/info/ncurses-bin.list
/var/lib/dpkg/info/ncurses-bin.md5sums

I am at a loss as to where to proceed. Thanks for any help

Answer 1

I believe you need to install ncurses-dev

Answer 2

'sudo yum install ncurses-devel.x86_64' prior to running ./configure worked just fine for me. Fedora 21 x64, btw.

After I extracted the tar, the documentation was in '/opt_src_{version}/HOWTO/INSTALL.md. The contents of which states:

Required Utilities

These are the tools you need in order to unpack and build Erlang/OTP.

WARNING: Please have a look at the [Known platform issues][] chapter before you start.

Unpacking

• GNU unzip, or a modern uncompress.
• A TAR program that understands the GNU TAR format for long filenames.

Building

• GNU make
• Compiler -- GNU C Compiler, gcc or the C compiler frontend for LLVM, clang.
• Perl 5
• GNU m4 -- If HiPE (native code) support is enabled. HiPE can be disabled using --disable-hipe
• ncurses, termcap, or termlib -- The development headers and libraries are needed, often known as ncurses-devel. Use --without-termcap to build without any of these libraries. Note that in this case only the old shell (without any line editing) can be used.
• sed -- Stream Editor for basic text transformation.

ncurses just happened to be the only required package I didn't have installed on this development VM. So your mileage may vary.

This was the output of 'locate ncurses' after I installed the ncurses lib:

/usr/lib64/libncurses++.so.5
/usr/lib64/libncurses++.so.5.9
/usr/lib64/libncurses++w.so.5
/usr/lib64/libncurses++w.so.5.9
/usr/lib64/libncurses.so.5
/usr/lib64/libncurses.so.5.9
/usr/lib64/libncursesw.so.5
/usr/lib64/libncursesw.so.5.9
/usr/share/doc/ncurses
/usr/share/doc/ncurses-base
/usr/share/doc/ncurses/ANNOUNCE
/usr/share/doc/ncurses/AUTHORS
/usr/share/doc/ncurses/NEWS.bz2
/usr/share/doc/ncurses/README
/usr/share/doc/ncurses/TO-DO
/usr/share/doc/ncurses-base/README
/usr/share/licenses/ncurses-base
/usr/share/licenses/ncurses-base/COPYING

So I'd say the OP had a corrupt / bad ncurses install. I'm just posting this here because this was the #1 Google result I got when I was too lazy to RTFD.

Answer 3

One alternative is using the option "--without-termcap"

otp_src_18.0/configure file says:

--without-termcap        do not use any termcap libraries
                                     (ncurses,curses,termcap,termlib)

./configure --prefix=/home/username/erlang/18.0 --without-termcap

Set your PATH variable as shown below.

export PATH=$PATH=/home/username/erlang/18.0/bin

Not sure about implications though. :) Hope this helps someone.