Re: [PATCH] config.mak.uname: use iconv from Homebrew on macOS

From: Carlo Marcelo Arenas Belón <carenas@gmail.com>
Date: Dec 10, 2025, 11:17 UTC
Message-ID: <qnb77j3b5m6rfbzr3qhmwalo5lha4gqslvzqsfuq6zur74ze7j@wqriu4w7wbzw>
In-Reply-To: <16efc726-34be-44f5-aa92-4e82b663ab3d@web.de>

On Tue, Dec 09, 2025 at 08:35:34PM -0800, René Scharfe wrote:

Show 9 quoted lines

> The library function iconv(3) supplied with macOS versions 15.7.2
> (Sequoia) and 26.1 (Tahoe) is unreliable when doing conversions from
> ISO-2022-JP to UTF-8 in multiple steps; t3900 reports this breakage:
> 
>   not ok 17 - ISO-2022-JP should be shown in UTF-8 now
>   not ok 25 - ISO-2022-JP should be shown in UTF-8 now
>   not ok 38 - commit --fixup into ISO-2022-JP from UTF-8
> 
> As a workaround, use libiconv from Homebrew, if available.

While I think Homebrew libraries are usually better than the ones that come with the system, there are reasons why you would prefer not linking with them and therefore forcing Homebrew as a dependency of your binaries.

One particularly good reason is that if you are building a fat binary ( useful if you target recent macOS which still supports x86_64 but don't want to distribute different versions per CPU type) then the system library (even if broken) might be preferred.

Slightly off topic, but should another patch that adds a `NO_HOMEBREW` Makefile flag similar to `NO_FINK` or `NO_APPLE_PORTS` be added to help drive this?

Carlo