If NEEDS_LIBICONV is set for Solaris 8, it does not build git for me

Hello Junio,

     [ Paul and Jason CCed because they touched that section last ]

Patch is appended at the very bottom of the E-Mail. I have a fully patched Solaris 8 with Forte 11. In order to get git compile I had to delete the

	NEEDS_LIBICONV = YesPlease

line from the Makefile in the Solaris 8 section. After my patch the section in the Makefile looks like that:

        ifeq ($(uname_R),5.8)
                NO_UNSETENV = YesPlease
                NO_SETENV = YesPlease
                NO_C99_FORMAT = YesPlease
                NO_STRTOUMAX = YesPlease
        endif
        ifeq ($(uname_R),5.9)
                NO_UNSETENV = YesPlease
                NO_SETENV = YesPlease
                NO_C99_FORMAT = YesPlease
                NO_STRTOUMAX = YesPlease
        endif

As you can see _after_ my patch the secion for 5.8 and 5.9 is the same. So I wonder if it is possible to merge this two sections. But I have no idea how to do that in the makefile language. I tried to remove other flags for 5.8, too but it always resulted in built break so all other flags are necessary.

----8<---- cut here ----8<---- cut here ----8<---- cut here ----8<----

The following issue as _absolutly_ nothing todo with the above and is here only for completeness. In order to get git to compile with Forte 11 you have to work around a compiler bug in Forte 11. Forte 11 chokes sometimes when function arguments are declared as static (I raised this topic before even on this list). I guess that I will also file a bug against forte 11 tomorrow. The symptom is:

    CC diff-delta.o
"diff-delta.c", line 248: identifier redeclared: create_delta
        current : function(pointer to const struct delta_index {pointer to const void src_buf, unsigned long src_size, unsigned int hash_mask, array[-1] of pointer to struct index_entry {..} hash}, pointer to const void, unsigned long, pointer to unsigned long, unsigned long) returning pointer to void
        previous: function(pointer to const struct delta_index {pointer to const void src_buf, unsigned long src_size, unsigned int hash_mask, array[-1] of pointer to struct index_entry {..} hash}, pointer to const void, unsigned long, pointer to unsigned long, unsigned long) returning pointer to void : "delta.h", line 37
cc: acomp failed for diff-delta.c
gmake[1]: *** [diff-delta.o] Error 2

As you can see Forte 11 is complaining that the protype is different to the function. But it is not they absolut identical. And here is the workaround which should _not_ be commited because it is just wrong. It removes the const flags from the function arguments which results in lot of warnings but does compile git with Forte 11.

Thomas Glanzmann <thomas@glanzmann.de> writes:

In a distant past when I built git on an otherwise unused Sol8 at work I recall I needed that. I do not think that machine used Forte compiler, though.

Regarding 5.8 vs 5.9 (dis)similarity, I suspect that other three are there in the version specific section only because people who needed them had access to only that version, and everybody played safe. I would be for example very surprised if NO_SETENV were unneeded on Solaris 5.7, given that both 5.8 and 5.9 need it (if it is unneeded on 5.7 that would mean Sun dropped setenv when they went to 5.8).

We currently handle only three cases for Solaris in the Makefile, meaning that we consider that Solaris world is fragmented in three factions: just "SunOS", 5.8 or 5.9.

I suspect that a blanket statement "Solaris 8 needs (or does not need) NEEDS_LIBICONV" would not hold true. It probably depends on many other things (perhaps OS patchlevel, extra packages, C compiler suite). The best course of action is for interested Solaris users to get together, list combinations of possible variations that are available to them and they care about, and see which make variable is needed where, and refine the current "three-faction fragmentation", which apparently does not reflect reality.

Unfortunately I am not in a position to best judge how Solaris world is fragmented.

And Junio C. Hamano writes:

I didn't even know you could patch 5.8 enough to use that compiler version. I can't imagine what strange combinations of C89 and C99 features are available.

Luckily for me, I no longer have easy access to Solaris <9.

At some point, the crazy patch combinations need relegated to
each particular site's config.mak.  Solaris 8 has entered the
first "retirement phase", but new orders can include it for about
another month:
  http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/support/sol8.xml

Jason

Hello,

I even think that Forte 11 was one of the first who supported C99 in the first place. However my intention is the following: I build git on Solaris 5.8 because it works on any system that is 5.8 or higher (5.9, 5.10 and the upcomming 5.11). Good in theory. But not in practice since they bumped the perl version (I did not thought of that before). With high probability I could work around that. But at the moment I don't care that much because I have a build host for every major release of Solaris and I don't use the perl part of git not that much. However having git on Solaris is a real pleasure. Together with sudo and vim.

        Thomas