Here are notes on compiling gambit revision 6294 (the current latest) from the SourceForge gambit repository.
There is a problem with libtool on Ubuntu 8 and 9, that will cause the build process to fail with an error like this:
../../ libtool: .... X--tag=CXX: command not found
The only workaround is to use an older version of libtool from Ubuntu hardy. Here is how to install it:
sudo aptitude purge libtool
wget http://mirrors.kernel.org/ubuntu/pool/main/libt/libtool/libtool_1.5.26-1ubuntu1_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i libtool_1.5.26-1ubuntu1_i386.deb
It is helpful to “pin” this package so that it won’t be automatically updated when running apt-get dist-upgrade. Edit /etc/apt/preferences (if the file doesn’t exist then just create it) and write this:
Package: libtool
Pin: version 1.5.26-1ubuntu1
Pin-Priority: 1001
This will keep libtool at version 1.5.26-1ubuntu1.
Now to install the latest version of gambit:
sudo aptitude install autoconf autotools-dev svn automake
svn co https://gambit.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/gambit gambit
cd gambit/trunk/gambit/
aclocal
autoconf
autoheader
automake
The autoheader command is probably not necessary but I’m mentioning it because it’s part of the usual process to make a GNU configure script.
Now make and install as usual:
$ ./configure --prefix=$HOME/gambit
$ make
$ make install
To run gambit add these lines to $HOME/.bashrc:
export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$HOME/gambit/lib/
export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/gambit/bin/
Open a terminal and run gambit.