Re: AIX and _nc_is_abs_path

[Ben Lentz]

On 6/16/14, 6:32 PM, Thomas Dickey wrote:
> On Mon, Jun 16, 2014 at 08:00:13AM -0400, Ben Lentz wrote:
> > > Hello,
> > > I'm trying to build ncurses-5.9 for AIX and I've found that
> > > somewhere after 5.5 and starting with 5.8 and 5.9, a dependency on
> > > the function _nc_is_abs_path was added in several places.
> > >
> > > I've tried looking around (unsuccessfully) and I'm pretty sure I
> > > don't have this function in any of the AIX system libraries.
> > >
> > > I tried adding -UNCURSES_TERM_ENTRY_H_incl to CFLAGS while doing
> > > ./configure (I thought maybe the hooks in ./include/term_entry.h
> > > would help me) but there are still references in tset.c.
> > >
> > > If I set -UNCURSES_TERM_ENTRY_H_incl, hack out the references to
> > > _nc_is_abs_path in tset.c, then the build proceeds further, but
> > > dies linking toe:
> no - the problem is before that
>
> > >         gcc -g
> > > -Wl,-blibpath:/opt/local/bash/lib:/usr/lib:/lib,-brtl -maix64 ../obj_s/toe.o 
> > > -L/opt/local/bash/lib -I../progs -I.
> The -blibpath option is expected for "--with-shared"
>
> Actually the first -L option is unexpected, unless you've set LIBS or LDFLAGS 
> environment variables.
>
> > > -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I/opt/local/bash/include  -D_ALL_SOURCE -DNDEBUG
> > > -I. -I../include -I/opt/local/bash/include/ncurses
> > > -I/opt/local/bash/include -UNCURSES_TERM_ENTRY_H_incl  --param 
> > > max-inline-insns-single=1200   -L../lib -lncurses -L../lib -lncurses    -o toe
> The -L../lib is what you should be using (and would be overridden by the first 
> -L option)
>
> > > ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: ._nc_is_dir_path
> > > ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: ._nc_is_file_path
> > > ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: ._nc_first_db
> > > ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: ._nc_next_db
> > > ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: ._nc_last_db
> > >
> > > I've read the INSTALL document and googled my heart out for this
> > > issue and am trying this mailing list as a last resort before I
> > > give in an revert back to an older version that compiles without
> > > issue on AIX.
> The problem is likely that there's an older version of ncurses in 
> /opt/local/bash/lib,
> and the link is picking that.  You can work around upgrades of this sort by 
> setting
> the environment RPATH_LIST, e.g., to these two directories
>
>         ../lib
>         /opt/local/bash/lib
>
> The variable is a colon-separated list.  Something like this:
>
> (make distclean first, of course)
>
>         RPATH_LIST=../lib:/opt/local/bash/lib ./configure --with-shared
>
> should produce makefile with that list embedded rather than just the single 
> directory.
>
> However, setting LIBS or LDFLAGS to /opt/local/bash/lib will give problems.
> That's what the --prefix and --exec-prefix options are for.

You're completely right... I had 5.5 without --with-shared (not 
supported on 5.5 on AIX) in there beforehand. Some of the environment 
variables are from a huge build script that I use to build open source 
stuff. I can definitely empty these out if they're causing an issue with 
the build system in ncurses.

After following your suggestion and emptying out the destination, I have 
made more progress, except it seems there's now an issue with the make 
install step.

On AIX, an unfortunate personality quirk is that the shared library file 
extensions are .a instead of .so, and the .so files are archived into 
the .a. This might be causing the 'make install' problem I'm having on 
5.9. For example:

$ file /opt/local/curl/lib/libcurl.a
/opt/local/curl/lib/libcurl.a: archive (big format)
$ ar tv /opt/local/curl/lib/libcurl.a
rwxr-xr-x     0/0     3748939 Jun 01 22:59 2014 libcurl.so.4
$ ldd /opt/local/curl/bin/curl | grep libcurl.a
         /opt/local/curl/lib/libcurl.a(libcurl.so.4)
$ ar xv /opt/local/curl/lib/libcurl.a
x - libcurl.so.4
$ file libcurl.so.4
libcurl.so.4: 64-bit XCOFF executable or object module not stripped

Here's the entire set of build steps. Notice I'm doing this with the 
latest version of 5.9 I could find installed into a totally empty 
directory (rm -rf $WHERE); and I'm getting a lot further. It's almost 
like this is getting installed as a .a and it should be a .so

$ export WHERE=/opt/local/ncurses
$ export PATH="$WHERE/bin:$PATH"
$ export CFLAGS="-I$WHERE/include"
$ export CPPFLAGS=$CFLAGS
$ export LDFLAGS="-L$WHERE/lib"
$ export CC="gcc -g -Wl,-blibpath:$WHERE/lib:/usr/lib:/lib,-brtl -maix64"
$ export CXX="g++ -g -Wl,-blibpath:$WHERE/lib:/usr/lib:/lib,-brtl -maix64"
$ export OBJECT_MODE="64"
$ curl -sL 
ftp://invisible-island.net/ncurses/current/ncurses-5.9-20140614.tgz | 
gunzip | tar xf -
$ cd ncurses-5.9-20140614
$ rm -rf $WHERE
$ ./configure --prefix=$WHERE --mandir=$WHERE/share/man 
--infodir=$WHERE/share/info --with-shared
...
$ make
...
$ make install
...
Target "install" is up to date.
installing ../lib/libncurses.a as /opt/local/ncurses/lib/libncurses.a
        /mnt/sw/build/ncurses-5.9-20140614/install-sh -c -m 644 
../lib/libncurses.a /opt/local/ncurses/lib/libncurses.a
        ranlib /opt/local/ncurses/lib/libncurses.a
ar: 0707-108 File /opt/local/ncurses/lib/libncurses.a is not an archive 
file.
ranlib: 0654-601 Execution of ar failed
Usage: ranlib [-t] [-X {32|64|32_64}] [--] file ...
make: 1254-004 The error code from the last command is 1.


Stop.
make: 1254-004 The error code from the last command is 2.


Stop.
$ file /opt/local/ncurses/lib/libncurses.a
/opt/local/ncurses/lib/libncurses.a: 64-bit XCOFF executable or object 
module not stripped