[Mailman-Users] Problem with Installing Mailman 2.1.9 on Solaris 10

[vancleef at lostwells.net]

The esteemed David Devereaux-Weber has said:
> 
> I'm having a problem with building mailman 2.1.9 on Solaris 10.  No problems with configure or make, but make install breaks.
> 
> Here is an extract:
> 
> /opt/csw/lib/python2.3/distutils/dist.py:213: 

There's your problem.
> 
> Does anyone see something here?
> 
You're using the wrong Python.  I don't know where you got this Python
(/opt/csw is not a Solaris 10 directory), but it's behaving the same
as the Python 2.3 that is in the Solaris 10 distribution installed in
/usr/sfw.  My recollection is that /opt/csw is being used by one or
more prebuilt services who have religious tabus about using
/usr/local, and presume you've downloaded a prebuilt Python package
and installed it.  

Download the Python 2.4.4 source (not 2.5 or later), configure, and
build that.  It will not build completely, but what doesn't build
(tcl and the ssl functions) isn't needed for Mailman.  Solaris 10
comes with gcc 3.4.2 in /usr/sfw/bin, which can be used to build both
Python and Mailman.  

When you've got Python 2.4.4 built and installed, use "which python"
to make sure it's the first one in your path.  
/usr/local/bin/python

Also, on a Solaris system (all versions), I strongly recommend
renaming /usr/ucb/cc to something else so that configure scripts don't
think the system has a working cc.  That particular cc is a shell
script stub that is there for historical reasons dating from the
original SVR4 specification in 1988.  

If you have downloaded and installed the Sun development system
(Studio 11 is the current marketing name for it) that installs by
default in /opt/SUNWspro, use that cc and CC instead of the GNU stuff.
Note that you'll have to force the configure scripts not to use gcc
when you run them.  

Hank