ar(1) issue building coreutils on 64-bit AIX

[Daniel Richard G.]

I am building coreutils-6.9 on a 64-bit AIX 5.3 system.

The system ar(1) command, in its default behavior, only accepts 32-bit 
objects. In order to accept 64-bit objects, a switch has to be given. So in 
my standard build environment, I set

        AR_FLAGS="-X64 cru"

This takes care of the bulk of Libtool-based packages out there. However, 
in building coreutils, I encountered this:

----BEGIN BUILD LOG EXCERPT----
...
rm -f libcoreutils.a
ar cru libcoreutils.a allocsa.o base64.o c-ctype.o c-strcasecmp.o ...
ar: 0707-126 allocsa.o is not valid with the current object file mode.
        Use the -X option to specify the desired object mode.
ar: 0707-126 base64.o is not valid with the current object file mode.
        Use the -X option to specify the desired object mode.
ar: 0707-126 c-ctype.o is not valid with the current object file mode.
        Use the -X option to specify the desired object mode.
...
gmake[2]: *** [libcoreutils.a] Error 167
gmake[2]: Leaving directory `/tmp/coreutils-6.9.build/lib'
gmake[1]: *** [all] Error 2
gmake[1]: Leaving directory `/tmp/coreutils-6.9.build/lib'
gmake: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
----END BUILD LOG EXCERPT----

I noticed that lib/Makefile uses ARFLAGS instead of AR_FLAGS. I set this in 
the environment, reconfigured, and built again. Same error.

Edited the variable manually in the makefile. The build succeeds.

I think that the variable in question should be picked up from the 
environment, for cases like this one (editing makefiles is cumbersome, 
especially in a semi-automated build system as I have here). I would also 
suggest renaming it to AR_FLAGS, for consistency with Libtool convention.


--Daniel


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