Re: Unusual content in lib_gen.c and compile failure?

[Thomas Dickey]

----- Original Message -----
| From: "Jeffrey Walton" <address@hidden>
| To: "Thomas Dickey" <address@hidden>
| Cc: address@hidden
| Sent: Saturday, October 21, 2017 9:39:45 PM
| Subject: Re: Unusual content in lib_gen.c and compile failure?
| 
| On Sat, Oct 21, 2017 at 4:40 PM, Thomas Dickey <address@hidden>
| wrote:
| > On Sat, Oct 21, 2017 at 08:37:46AM -0400, Jeffrey Walton wrote:
| >> I'm catching a compile failure on Ubuntu 17, x86_64 and GCC 6.2.0.
| >> I've been able to duplicate it under 5.8, 5.9 and 6.0. Its unusual
| >> and
| >> I have not seen it before:
| >
| > The usual problems with lib_gen.c are the C preprocessor and awk.
| > The build-script uses the C preprocessor to obtain the
| > corresponding
| > expansion for the functions that act the same as macros (with the
| > same
| > name), and awk's used to massage the output into usable C code.
| >
| > I haven't looked at Ubuntu 17, but it would be helpful to know
| >
| > a) which ncurses patch-date?  I made a fix here:
| >
| > https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/NEWS.html#t20150810
| >
| >    which dealt with awk differences.  Some other machines may use
| >    gawk.
| >    Debian's mawk package maintainer (an Ubuntu developer) insists
| >    on
| >    delivering an old version with no bug-fixes applied.
| 
| $ which awk
| /usr/bin/awk
| $ command -v awk
| /usr/bin/awk
| $ awk --version
| awk: not an option: --version
| $ awk -W version
| mawk 1.3.3 Nov 1996, Copyright (C) Michael D. Brennan
| 
| compiled limits:
| max NF             32767
| sprintf buffer      2040
| 
| And rats, I have not been using patches. I've been fetching tarballs
| from https://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/ncurses.
| 
| Is there a location for the patches? I don't see them discussed at
| https://www.gnu.org/software/ncurses/.

https://invisible-island.net/ncurses/ncurses.html#download_ncurses
https://invisible-island.net/datafiles/current/ncurses.tar.gz

| 
| > b) compiler version?
| >    If it's not awk, then it could be compiler differences (although
| >    I've
| >    worked through the various incompatibilities introduced by the
| >    gcc
| >    updates, Ubuntu is known to have package breakage for versions
| >    that
| >    work in Debian...).
| 
| $ gcc --version
| gcc (Ubuntu 6.2.0-7ubuntu11) 6.2.0 20161018
| 
| $ lsb_release -a
| No LSB modules are available.
| Distributor ID: Ubuntu
| Description:    Ubuntu Zesty Zapus
| Release:        17.04
| Codename:       zesty
| 
| And thanks, I was not aware of the differences until now. I don't use
| sed and awk that often, and I did not know Ubuntu used a different
| awk. But 1996+<some patches> does seem kind of old.
| 
| I can build the latest mawk from sources, or I can install gawk. One

https://invisible-island.net/mawk/mawk.html#download

| more package is not going to make a difference to me. Patching
| Ncurses
| to work around a defective mawk seems least desirable to me. I feel
| like I should fix the root cause. Do you have a recommendation?
| 
| I may have found a way to further complicate things... I need to
| build
| Readline from sources but it has caused a few programs problems. For
| example, it broke Git signing because Git defers to GnuPG, and GnuPG
| uses Readline for the password prompt.
| 
| Sorry about all this trouble. The task at hand is to build Git, Wget,
| GnuTLS and a few others from sources for downlevel clients like
| CentOS
| 5, OS X 10.5 and Solaris 10. They lack Git and have an old Wget that
| cannot do SNI.
| 
| Jeff
| 

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey <address@hidden>
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net