On 2007-04-08 13:14:42 +0900, Paul Guyot wrote:
We cannot simply autoconf for readline for the following reasons: (a) readline comes with two incompatible APIs. (b) Apple's gcc reads /usr/local/include before /usr/include
This is the case under Linux, but I thought it wasn't under Mac OS X (or my test was wrong, or the conditions were slightly different...).
(c) Apple's ld reads /usr/lib/libreadline.dylib before /usr/local/lib/libreadline.a when provided with -L/usr/local/lib (d) some users have an incompatible version of readline in /usr/local.
In other words, if you install the incompatible version of readline available in ticket 10651 in /usr/local, I think you cannot compile *and* link the following piece of code without redefining completely the list of system includes, with -nostdinc. Which is the beginning of a nightmare. https://svn.macosforge.org/projects/macports/ticket/10651
BTW, there's the same problem with GMP under Linux. And we had many reports to the MPFR mailing-list (as MPFR uses GMP).
I think it's time to wonder why we autoconf for readline (and other stuff). At some point we decided that MacPorts (then darwinports) was to support MacOS X only. (I was against this decision, but here we are today; and considering that I no longer can install MacPorts on linux boxes I have access to, I would favor the use or more MacOS X technologies). Should we simply drop the autoconf options for readline? Should we just determine what's the API version of readline installed in /usr/? Should we keep users whining they cannot install MacPorts because they have a readline in /usr/local?
Vincent: before you comment on this, I must say that I am not taking into consideration the C*_PATH and LIBRARY_PATH problem. In fact, I do not care about it at all, I am concerned by end-users not people with a Ph.D. in computer science who are wise enough to know that if they set these variables, it might break things and they need to unset them before compiling base/ :)
Instead of being a problem, using these environment variables should be the solution. And this is the recommended solution (or workaround, if you prefer) for MPFR if users installed a new (incompatible) GMP version in /usr/local[*]. BTW, if users installed software in /usr/local, they should care about setting environment variables in the correct way (or complain to the vendor of their development tools for not setting paths in a consistent way). [*] http://www.mpfr.org/faq.html#undef_ref1 Now, if these variables are correctly set up and MacPorts breaks, then this is a bug in MacPorts. -- Vincent Lefèvre <vincent@vinc17.org> - Web: <http://www.vinc17.org/> 100% accessible validated (X)HTML - Blog: <http://www.vinc17.org/blog/> Work: CR INRIA - computer arithmetic / Arenaire project (LIP, ENS-Lyon)