Re: libidn 1.36 on Solaris 11.4

[Bruno Haible]

Hi Simon,

> > On Solaris 11.4, the build fails like this:
> ...
> > ../libtool[1720]: eval: syntax error at line 1: `|' unexpected
> > gmake[3]: *** [Makefile:1621: libidn.la] Error 3
> > 
> > The fix is to use attachment 42206 from 
> > <http://savannah.gnu.org/patch/?9467>
> > (on top of the newest libtool release 2.4.6).
> 
> Thanks -- patching the libtool used by libidn is fragile and time-
> consuming.  Are there any well-established patterns to do that?

In libidn, you commit files brought in through gnulib-tool in the repository.
Therefore it would make sense to commit m4/libtool.m4, m4/lt*.m4, and
build-aux/ltmain.sh in the repository as well.

That's what I do e.g. in libunistring.m4 [1]. You can see that this costs
me only one commit for each new libtool release - plus one commit to fix
libtool bugs.[2][3]

Fragile? This is actually less fragile than what you currently do, namely
rely on the 'libtool' command that is installed on the machine on which you
produce the tarballs.

I think your cfg.mk won't even need a change.

> I am hoping your email report in the mailing list archive, together
> with the patch you provided against libtool a long time ago, is
> sufficient for anyone building on Solaris 11.4 to patch it locally.

The patch I have provided is against the libtool.m4 files. It is not
trivial to transpose to a 'configure' patch. So, if you don't use the patch,
users will have quite a hassle to get the package built on Solaris 11.[34].

Bruno

[1] https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=libunistring.git;a=shortlog
[2] 
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=libunistring.git;a=history;f=m4/libtool.m4;hb=HEAD
[3] 
https://git.savannah.gnu.org/gitweb/?p=libunistring.git;a=history;f=build-aux/ltmain.sh;hb=HEAD