Undefined symbol error message

[Keith Powell]

On Sunday 11 Dec 2005 9:06 pm, Daniel Robitaille wrote:
> On 12/11/05, Keith Powell <keith at keithg4jvx.force9.co.uk> wrote:
> > I have installed a program QSSTV from the repositories, but it
> > won't run.
> >
> > If I try to run it from a terminal, I get the error message:
> >
> > symbol lookup error: qsstv: undefined symbol:
> > _ZN13QWindowsStyleC1Ev
> >
> > I have no idea what this means.
> >
> > Please can someone help, by telling me what it means and how I
> > can run the program?
>
> Is that Breezy?  A google search turns out these 2 emails:
>  http://lists.debian.org/debian-qt-kde/2005/09/msg00373.html
>
> So it seems Debian had the same problem briefly in September.
>

Thanks for your reply, Daniel.

Yesterday, I felt as though I was hitting my head against a brick wall 
in trying to install the qsstv program.

I run an rpm based distro as well as breezy. There isn't an rpm for 
the program, so I tried to compile it. 'Configure' kept failing with 
the usual (for me) loads of cryptic error messages, few of which I 
could even try to understand. Spent many hours trying to sort it, but 
it was "RPM Hell!"

Then I turned to Breezy and found the program in the repositories. 
Problems solved, or so I thought! No, I got the error message about a 
symbol lookup error. So I tried compiling the program into Breezy. No 
luck, the same sort of error messages as I got with the other distro. 
In fact, "DEB Hell". I was going round in circles and getting 
nowhere!

I sometimes wonder if the programmers who issue their programs in 
tarball form are trying to frighten off non-experts from using Linux. 
If only the compiling error messages were straightforward (eg, 
"Package xyz.2.1.3, needs to be installed, as Libxyz.2.1.3, which is 
part of it, is required. You have version 1.2.3 installed"), we 
non-experts might get less frustrated. End of rant!

I'll try it again with the QT version mentioned in Debian lists to 
which you pointed me. 

Cheers and thanks again

Keith