Local installs not working correctly with relative paths

[billschereriii]

I'm running into some difficulties with LCOV 2.0 local installs.

Platform: MacOS Ventura 13.3.1/LCOV 2.0 (github branch "v2.0")/perl 5.30

When I perform a local install, I am seeing different behavior depending on whether I set the PREFIX to a relative or absolute path. In both cases, make test from the LCOV root passes, but I see different behavior when trying to run LCOV from a directory other than the LCOV root:

With make PREFIX=pwd`/install install, I get the following regardless of which directory I run LCOV from:

$ install/bin/lcov
lcov: ERROR: invalid command line:
  install/bin/lcov
Need one of options -z, -c, -a, -e, -r, -l, --diff or --summary
Use lcov --help to get usage information

With make PREFIX=install install I get the above when running from the LCOV root, but the following when running from any other folder:

$ lcov/install/bin/lcov
Can't locate lcovutil.pm in @INC (you may need to install the lcovutil module) (@INC contains: install/lib/lcov /Library/Perl/5.30/darwin-thread-multi-2level /Library/Perl/5.30 /Network/Library/Perl/5.30/darwin-thread-multi-2level /Network/Library/Perl/5.30 /Library/Perl/Updates/5.30.3 /System/Library/Perl/5.30/darwin-thread-multi-2level /System/Library/Perl/5.30 /System/Library/Perl/Extras/5.30/darwin-thread-multi-2level /System/Library/Perl/Extras/5.30) at lcov/install/bin/lcov line 77.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at lcov/install/bin/lcov line 102.

[henry2cox]

Your first call worked the way it was expected to: lcov is trying to tell you that it expects a subcommand - and does not know what you want it to do. You might want to try install/bin/lcov --help or MANPATH=install/share/lcov/man man lcov (long path required because I suspect that you did not set your MANPATH).

Your second command failed because your PREFIX path was relative (not absolute) - and so the library path that got baked into the installed scripts is not visible from where you expected it to be. (You can call via PERL5LIB=/path/to/my/install/lib:$PERL5LIB .... if you really want to do things this way).

You might want to check to see what you PATH is set to.

[billschereriii]

Hi Henry,

I agree with your assessment. A couple comments:

1. It's probably worth updating the documentation to flag that an absolute path is required for the prefix
2. A friendlier approach would be to build an absolute path in the installer before passing it on to the rest of the installation
3. I don't know enough about perl to know whether this is possible, but coming up with a way to give an error message that doesn't reference your internal library would be a good thing

[henry2cox]

for 1 and 2..it seems fairly straightforward to exchange the user's relative path (if any) for an abolute one - and use that. Possibly can warn the user what happened. I'll fix it.

for 3: it is kind of a normal perl thing - and you will see a similar message if some other required perl package is missing. Similar thing happens with Python, C++ - or any other languages I know of which use libraries.

[billschereriii]

Sounds great, thanks!

[billschereriii]

BTW, this came up as part of our migration from v1.12 to v2.0. We had been using a relative path with v1.12 and it didn't cause us any probpems there.

[henry2cox]

BTW, this came up as part of our migration from v1.12 to v2.0. We had been using a relative path with v1.12 and it didn't cause us any probpems there.

yeah...in refactoring the original implementation, I moved a lot of common code to the lcovutil module. Before that, lcov didn't use any of its own modules (only system-supplied ones) - and so the PERL5LIB path was not an issue.

[billschereriii]

It looks like you're assigning the first character to make variable FIRST_CHAR but then testing against FIRST -- typo?

[henry2cox]

damn.

[henry2cox]

fixed in 07a1127c2b4390abf4a516e9763fb28a956a9ce4

[henry2cox]

Closing this now, as I think it was fixed some time back. If there is still a problem, please either reopen this issue or file a new one. Please include a testcase and/or detailed directions for how to reproduce. Thanks Henry