Linux From Scratch: Version 5.1-pre1
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# Installing Expect-5.40.0

The Expect package contains a program for doing scripted dialogues with other interactive programs.

    Approximate build time:  0.1 SBU
    Required disk space:     3.9 MB

Official download location for Expect (5.40.0):
http://expect.nist.gov/src/
And for the Expect Spawn Patch:
http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/patches/lfs/cvs/expect-5.40.0-spawn.patch

For its installation Expect depends on: Bash, Binutils, Coreutils, Diffutils, GCC, Glibc, Grep, Make, Sed, Tcl.

##

## Installation of Expect

First apply a patch:

    patch -Np1 -i ../expect-5.40.0-spawn.patch

This fixes a bug in Expect that can result in bogus failures during the GCC test suite run.

Now prepare Expect for compilation:

    ./configure --prefix=/tools --with-tcl=/tools/lib --with-x=no

The meaning of the configure options:

- `--with-tcl=/tools/lib`: This ensures that the configure script finds the Tcl installation in our temporary tools location. We don't want it to find an existing one that may possibly reside on the host system.

- `--with-x=no`: This tells the configure script not to search for Tk (the Tcl GUI component) or the X Window System libraries, both of which may possibly reside on the host system.

Build the package:

    make

As discussed earlier, we don't recommend running the test suites for the temporary tools here in this chapter. If you still want to run the Expect test suite anyway, the following command will do so. However, you should be aware that the Expect test suite is sometimes known to experience failures under certain host conditions that are not fully understood. Therefore, test suite failures here are not surprising, but are not considered critical:

    make test

And install:

    make SCRIPTS="" install

The meaning of the make parameter:

- `SCRIPTS=""`: This prevents installation of the supplementary expect scripts which are not needed.

You can now remove the source directories of both Tcl and Expect.

##

## Contents of Expect

Installed program: expect

Installed library: libexpect5.39.a

## Short description

expect "talks" to other interactive programs according to a script.

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