Installing (compiling) jshon with libjansson on an old Linux (SLES 10)

Written by Claudio Kuenzler - 0 comments

Published on February 28th 2020 - Listed in Shell Linux

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Installing packages on old and end of life releases is sometimes very time intensive. Repositories might be gone, packages out of date, dependencies defect, etc. In this particular case the jshon command needed to be installed on an old SLES 10 machine. However: Even if some repositories still would work, a jshon rpm for SLES10 does not exist. Time to build it from source.

Download the source and dependency (jansson)

The latest jshon.tar.gz can be downloaded from the project site. To be able to build jshon, a dependency (jansson library) must be available. Therefore the sources of both packages need to be downloaded and unpacked:

sles10:~ # wget http://kmkeen.com/jshon/jshon.tar.gz
sles10:~ # wget http://www.digip.org/jansson/releases/jansson-2.12.tar.gz
sles10:~ # tar -xzf jshon.tar.gz; tar -xzf jansson-2.12.tar.gz

Compiling jansson

Before jshon can be compiled, it's dependency jansson must first be built on this system. Compiling jansson is straightforward and as long as all compiling tools (gcc, libtool, make, m4, etc) are available, this should work without any error:

sles10:~ # cd jansson-2.12
sles10:~ # ./configure && make

A successful compile will create the needed header files (jansson.h and jansson_config.h) and the library (libjansson) itself. The header files are located in the src sub directory and can now be copied into the unpacked jshon directory:

sles10:~/jansson-2.12 # cp src/jansson.h ../jshon-20120914/
sles10:~/jansson-2.12 # cp src/jansson_config.h ../jshon-20120914/

The libjansson library, including symlinks, can be found in the src/.libs sub directory and should be copied into the system's library path (as defined with ldconfig, usually in /usr/lib/):

sles10:~/jansson-2.12 # ls -ltr src/.libs
total 576
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   6592 Feb 28 08:31 utf.o
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  23124 Feb 28 08:36 dump.o
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   7228 Feb 28 08:36 memory.o
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  37192 Feb 28 08:36 load.o
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   6472 Feb 28 08:36 hashtable_seed.o
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  21084 Feb 28 08:36 hashtable.o
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   7656 Feb 28 08:36 error.o
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  47160 Feb 28 08:36 value.o
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   7944 Feb 28 08:36 strconv.o
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   7708 Feb 28 08:36 strbuffer.o
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  35296 Feb 28 08:36 pack_unpack.o
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   1302 Feb 28 08:36 libjansson.ver
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 149076 Feb 28 08:36 libjansson.so.4.11.1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root     20 Feb 28 08:36 libjansson.so.4 -> libjansson.so.4.11.1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root     20 Feb 28 08:36 libjansson.so -> libjansson.so.4.11.1
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root    949 Feb 28 08:36 libjansson.lai
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root     16 Feb 28 08:36 libjansson.la -> ../libjansson.la
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root   1206 Feb 28 08:36 libjansson.exp
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 197868 Feb 28 08:36 libjansson.a

sles10:~/jansson-2.12 # cp -p src/.libs/libjansson.so* /usr/lib/

Alternative: Add the path (~/jansson-2.12/src/.libs) to ldconfig.

Compiling and installing jshon

Now that jansson is ready on the system, let's continue with jshon. In the unpacked jshon directory there should now be the following files:

sles10:~/jansson-2.12 # cd ../jshon-20120914

sles10:~/jshon-20120914 # ll
total 60
-rw-r--r-- 1 leoevent users   636 Oct  4  2012 Makefile
-rw-r--r-- 1 root     root  12726 Feb 28 08:37 jansson.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 root     root   1627 Feb 28 08:50 jansson_config.h
-rw-r--r-- 1 leoevent users  6672 Oct  4  2012 jshon.1
-rw-r--r-- 1 leoevent users 25545 Feb 28 08:43 jshon.c

jshon.c is the actual jshon command as C source. It includes the jansson header dependency:

sles10:~/jshon-20120914 # grep jansson jshon.c
#include <jansson.h>
    build with gcc -o jshon jshon.c -ljansson
// deal with API incompatibility between jansson 1.x and 2.x

So-called C header files can be included in two ways:

1. #include <jansson.h>: Using the file name inside "less than" and "greater than" brackets means that the file (jansson.h) should be searched within the system's header files location (usually /usr/include).
   
2. #include "jansson.h": Without using the brackets but using double-quotes instead will search for the file (jansson.h) in the same directory/path as the C file.
   

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