Believe it or not I was installing mysql on a FreeBSD 7 box for most of the day. After looking at the make options my attention was grabbed by the WITH_LINUXTHREADS parameter. After a bit of googling it seemed the I did not need linuxthreads on FreeBSD7-STABLE. So there I go and add the WITH_LINUXTHREADS=no and… the installation fails at… linuxthreads.

Well. I’ve spent lots of time googling, passed numerous make errors. Basically at the end of the day I just modified the Makefile of the mysql port to totally bypass the WITH_LINUXTHREADS and just add the standart non-linuxthread configure options.

Open the Makefile

# vi /usr/ports/databases/mysqlxx-server/Makefile

Find these lines (or similar)

.if defined(WITH_LINUXTHREADS)
CONFIGURE_ARGS+=--with-named-thread-libs='-DHAVE_GLIBC2_STYLE_GETHOSTBYNAME_R
CONFIGURE_ARGS+=-D_THREAD_SAFE -I${LOCALBASE}/include/pthread/linuxthreads
CFLAGS+=        -D__USE_UNIX98 -D_REENTRANT -D_THREAD_SAFE
CFLAGS+=        -I${LOCALBASE}/include/pthread/linuxthreads
LIB_DEPENDS+=   lthread.[35]:${PORTSDIR}/devel/linuxthreads
CONFIGURE_ARGS+=-L${LOCALBASE}/lib -llthread -llgcc_r -llstdc++ -llsupc++’

Change to

.if defined(WITH_LINUXTHREADS)
CONFIGURE_ARGS+=--with-named-thread-libs=${PTHREAD_LIBS}
CFLAGS+=        ${PTHREAD_CFLAGS}

Everything compiled and installed afterwards without the linuxthreads (I did not want them anyway).

jQuery is around for a while already, but only recently I actually sat down and decided to give it a go. jQuery website defines itself as:

jQuery is a fast, concise, JavaScript Library that simplifies how you traverse HTML documents, handle events, perform animations, and add Ajax interactions to your web pages. jQuery is designed to change the way that you write JavaScript.

After trying it out, going through jQuery wiki pages I have to say it probably is the best Javascript framework I’ve seen. I have tried mootools (not very recent though), scriptaculous, but jQuery just beats them all. It’s lightweight, very easy to use, has a bunch of ready-made plugins and a large community.

If you’re planning to do some Javascript, try jQuery. Meanwhile I am placing jQuery on my must-use list.