Compiling Zsh on macOS with CLion

The Zsh project includes a Util/preconfig script that generates the configure script.

CLion is also capable of building the configure script (and executing it afterwards) using the pre-configuration command in the Build, Execution, Deployment > Makefile settings.

Since the Zsh project compiles shared libraries, it is important for the program to locate them at runtime.

Initially, I set the DESTDIR variable for make, but it didn’t affect where the program looked for the shared libraries.

However, the Makefile indicates that configuring the `–prefix` does influence the linker flags:

  prefix          = /Users/augustfeng/repositories/sf/zsh/build/usr/local
  exec_prefix     = ${prefix}
  bindir          = ${exec_prefix}/bin
  libdir          = ${exec_prefix}/lib

Additionally, to facilitate debugging, I needed to enable `–enable-zsh-debug`.

Ultimately, the pre-configuration now appears as follows:

  #!/bin/sh
  #
  # GNU Autotools template; feel free to customize.
  #
  which autoreconf >/dev/null && autoreconf --install --force --verbose "${PROJECT_DIR:-..}" 2>&1; /bin/sh "${PROJECT_DIR:-..}/configure" --prefix=${PROJECT_DIR:-..}/build/usr/local --enable-zsh-debug

There are some obstacles in a successful build of zsh on MacOS due to yodl not being readily distributed for MacOS.

This isn't too concerning, but it does make the build command exit with an error, which can fail a bigger automation.

In my situation, this fails the required build step for a Native Application configuration in CLion; I can't build and run/debug the program in one command.

At first I looked into compiling the yodl program locally, but it relies on a build program that isn't readily distributed either on MacOS.

Instead digging myself a rabbit hole grave, I just removed the install.man install.runhelp requirements from the install target in the Makefile.

Hint: I edited the Makefile.in because the Makefile is generated.