Re: AIX compilation problem

[Thomas Dickey]

On Tue, 23 Sep 2003, Saravanan Bellan wrote:

> I was trying to compile ncurses 5.3 with the widec option on AIX 4.3. After
> a lot of trial and error, I got it compiled after setting the the following
> variables,
>
> $ ./configure CFLAGS="-D_XOPEN_SOURCE=500 -D_ALL_SOURCE" --enable-widec
>
> _XOPEN_SOURCE used in wchar.h

I added a check in post-5.3 patches (see the rollup patch at
ftp://invisible-island.net) for the _XOPEN_SOURCE definition).

> _ALL_SOURCE in sys/ioctl.h

Which problem does this definition fix?  I've seen it a few times, but
don't recall if it's standardized.  Looking with google seems to confirm
that - it's used on AIX and 1-2 other platforms.

> Can anyone explain what those variables mean?

generally: these symbols are defined by an application to allow specific
features to be used in compiling an application.  Some of them are
standardized (X/Open documents _XOPEN_SOURCE and _XOPEN_SOURCE_EXTENDED),
and some are not.  The interrelations between these are often not
documented anywhere (or if they are, they differ from one platform
to another, effectively making them undocumented).  Finally, since they
differ in their effect, one cannot simply define all of the "nice" ones
since that can cause as much problem trying to compile as their lack.

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net