Bifrost requires exuberant-ctags package. Not available on Rocky 9.4

[jj-crowley]

Hi - I tried following the instructions of installing bifrost on a Rocky 9.4 Linux VM and came up against an issue. The installation requires the use of a package called exuberant-ctags and it is not available to Rocky 9.4. It is however part of the base installation of Ubuntu OS.
This seems to suggest that bifrost will not be compatible with Rocky Linux. I came up against this issue a few weeks ago but should do another test install just to verify what I'm writing here is 100% correct.
JJ

[dentalfloss1]

Hi, have you tried any of the packages from the website: https://ctags.sourceforge.net/ ?

[jj-crowley]

I am going to go through the whole process of installation again. As it happened a few weeks ago and I didn't take proper notes of all the twists and turns I took. But I did look for exuberant ctags on the internet and found a package but I think it didn't quite work out...I will go through the whole process from scratch and write it up properly.

[jj-crowley]

Ok, from a fresh install of Rocky Linux 9.4 on aarch64...

[jjcrowley@localhost ~]$ sudo dnf install exuberant-ctags
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 9 - aarch64 6.7 MB/s | 22 MB 00:03
Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux 9 openh264 (From Cisco) - aarch64 2.9 kB/s | 2.5 kB 00:00
Rocky Linux 9 - BaseOS 2.9 MB/s | 2.3 MB 00:00
Rocky Linux 9 - AppStream 7.5 MB/s | 7.0 MB 00:00
Rocky Linux 9 - CRB 1.9 MB/s | 1.9 MB 00:01
Rocky Linux 9 - Extras 9.7 kB/s | 15 kB 00:01
No match for argument: exuberant-ctags
Error: Unable to find a match: exuberant-ctags

After downloading exuberant-ctags from source forge...

[jjcrowley@localhost Downloads]$ sudo rpm -i ctags-5.8-1.i386.rpm
error: Failed dependencies:
libc.so.6 is needed by ctags-5.8-1.i386
libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.0) is needed by ctags-5.8-1.i386
libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.1) is needed by ctags-5.8-1.i386
libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.2) is needed by ctags-5.8-1.i386
libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.2.3) is needed by ctags-5.8-1.i386
libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.3) is needed by ctags-5.8-1.i386
libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.3.4) is needed by ctags-5.8-1.i386

So I just did this instead and it seemed to work out - just dnf install ctags..

63 sudo dnf install ctags
64 sudo pip install numpy contextlib2 pint ctypesgen==1.0.2
65 sudo dnf install python3-pip-21.2.3-8.el9.noarch
66 cd ..
67 cd bifrost/
68 ls
69 ./configure
70 sudo dnf install gcc
71 sudo dnf install g++
72 ./configure
73 make
74 sudo make install

It compiled without complaining. I haven't actually ran anything in bifrost but if generic ctags works then you might be able to install on Rocky Linux 9.4
Hope this is useful to someone.

Best regards,
JJ

[dentalfloss1]

Thanks for the info, we'll discuss this issue soon. Keep us posted on if you run into any problems with this ctags package

[jaycedowell]

For what it's worth I also ran into this on Red Hat 8.8 and dnf install ctags worked for me. I was able to build/install Bifrost and run a pipeline. The pipeline even did something.

@dentalfloss1 Maybe we should update our documentation to provide this alternate package name for Red Hat/Rocky/other Red Hat clones?