Hardened Linux From Scratch - Version SVN-20070501

Chapter 6. Installing Basic System Software

6.27. Bison-2.3

The Bison package contains a parser generator.

6.27.1. Installation of Bison

Prepare Bison for compilation: 

./configure --prefix=/usr --enable-gcc-warnings

The meaning of the new configure option:

--enable-gcc-warnings

This switch builds Bison with additional compiler warnings, including -Werror in the src/ directory.

The configure system causes bison to be built without support for internationalization of error messages if a bison program is not already in $PATH. The following addition will correct this. 

echo '#define YYENABLE_NLS 1' >> config.h

Compile the package: 

make

To test the results, issue: make check.

Install the package: 

make install

Bison installs the static library liby.a. We can replace this with a shared version with the following commands: 

cd lib/
gcc -shared -Wl,-soname,liby.so.2.3 -o liby.so.2.3 -fPIC main.o yyerror.o
rm -v /usr/lib/liby.a
install -v liby.so.2.3 /usr/lib/liby.so.2.3
ln -vsf liby.so.2.3 /usr/lib/liby.so

6.27.2. Contents of Bison

Installed programs: bison and yacc
Installed library: liby.so

Short Descriptions

bison

Generates, from a series of rules, a program for analyzing the structure of text files; Bison is a replacement for Yacc (Yet Another Compiler Compiler)

yacc

A wrapper for bison, meant for programs that still call yacc instead of bison; it calls bison with the -y option

liby.so

The Yacc library containing implementations of Yacc-compatible yyerror and main functions; this library is normally not very useful, but POSIX requires it