5.30. Flex-2.5.31

The Flex package contains a utility for generating programs that recognize patterns in text.

Approximate build time: 0.6 SBU
Required disk space: 22.5 MB
Installation depends on: Bash, Binutils, Bison, Coreutils, Diffutils, GCC, Gettext, Glibc, Grep, M4, Make, and Sed

5.30.1. Installation of Flex

Flex contains several known bugs. These can be fixed with the following patch:

patch -Np1 -i ../flex-2.5.31-debian_fixes-3.patch

The GNU autotools will detect that the Flex source code has been modified by the previous patch and tries to update the man page accordingly. This does not work on many systems, and the default page is fine, so make sure it does not get regenerated:

touch doc/flex.1

Now prepare Flex for compilation:

./configure --prefix=/tools

Compile the package:

make

To test the results, issue: make check.

Install the package:

make install

Details on this package are located in Section 6.29.2, “Contents of Flex.”