Re: Building m4 on BSDI 4.0.1

[Chris McGuire]

At 07:44 PM 12/12/2006, you wrote:
>Chris McGuire wrote:
>> 
>> I'll say I'm sorry up front if I'm not sending this to the proper people
>> or in the proper format. My hope is to just provide you with a little
>> feedback about an OS that you might not deal with much.
>
>The address@hidden list is a more appropriate forum.

I did e-mail them and got a response. I'm including everybody in my responses.


>>       wchar.h is messed up on BSDI 4.0.1 and the newer m4 tries to find it 
>> and
>> use it. It finds it and thinks it is okay to use, but it isn't.
>
>In order to teach M4 that BSDI's wchar is broken, and that M4's substitute
>wchar.h must be used instead, we must know what the failure scenario is.

My original e-mail provided the output of a full ./configure, make, make 
install for both failed and successful tries.


>>       pico src/stackovf.c
>>               Replace 'ss_sp' with 'ss_base'
>
>That's a non-standard spelling, but easy enough to write a configure check for.

See, you know what this means. I just know I need to make that edit. That is 
why I'm passing this info on to you guys so that you might be able to do 
something productive with it and save hacks like me hours down the road or be 
able to claim support for one more outdated OS. :)  Yes, my box is an active 
web server with all modern versions of major Open Source software running. I'll 
move the customers off of there somebody.

But since I hack at it to make it work, I figured I could at least try to give 
back a little of what I've come up with. I'm sorry that I can not provide you 
more details or a real patch. :(


>>                       ln -s /usr/local/bin/m4 m4
>
>Gross.  Why not just './configure --prefix=/usr' in the first place?

Sorry to disgust you. I'll use your way from now on.


>> I hope the info about my probelms with wchar.h and ss_sp  vs.  ss_base 
>> may be able to help you implement a build process for BSDI 4.0.1 that will
>> work smoothly in the future.
>
>I am doubtful that there will be a release of M4 1.4.9 unless other
>serious bugs turn up; and I highly doubt that BSDI, being an obsolete
>system, is well supported by libtool, which is a new prerequisite of the
>future M4 2.0 series.  Since it appears to be a computer museum,
>the best you will probably get for now is your hacked build.  That said,
>I'm still interested in simple patches that make M4 portable even to
>obsolete systems, where such patches are not a maintanence nightmare.

Eric, most of this is addressed above. But if there is something more I can 
provide I will try.

Thanks,
Chris




>-- 
>Eric Blake