Hello, list!
I thought I should write a few words on some information I’ve gleaned
trying to build picolisp on some of the BSDs. There are people on this list
with more experience than I with both BSD and picolisp; so please comment
upon what I have to say, and weigh in where you feel, or know, that it is
necessary, for the benefit of everyone. This is a learning experience for
me. I am not in a position to write authoritatively. I will try to
accurately report my findings, but please especially point out where I am
wrong or being misleading. (I would have done this unintentionally, of
course.)
*Bottom Line*
Starting from the picolisp 3.1.9.13 source — the latest as of this past
weekend (more about this below) — I was able to successfully build and
unit-test pil32 on the following BSDs: FreeBSD 10.1, OpenBSD 5.6, and
NetBSD 6.1.5. Also, I was able to successfully build and unit-test pil64 on
FreeBSD 10.1. (AFAIK, only FreeBSD, among the three, has bootstrap support
(with pil32) to build pil64, and I only looked at the bootstrapping option
for building pil64.)
The following sections just spell out some detail about the builds. A quick
note before that: on each BSD box in question, I had to install gmake. This
shouldn’t be a surprise — picolisp builds need GNU make, and the BSDs’
stock make is BSD, not GNU.
*FreeBSD 10.1*
I was aiming for a pil64 build in this machine, so I started with a 64-bit
(amd64) FreeBSD 10.1 box. First, I had to build pil32 (for the bootstrap
build).
On a fresh FreeBSD 10 box you won’t have gcc, so you need to install that.
I used pkg for that (i.e. I didn’t build gcc from ports). Its interface is
installed in /usr/local/bin/gcc48, by the way.
But, why install gcc? After all, clang (the stock compiler) is a “drop-in
replacement for gcc“, right? Wrong. If you try to build pil32 with clang,
you will be greeted with the following errors.
apply.o.log:apply.c:15:40: error: fields must have a constant size:
'variable length array in structure' extension will never be supported
apply.o.log:apply.c:67:43: error: fields must have a constant size:
'variable length array in structure' extension will never be supported
flow.o.log:flow.c:91:37: error: fields must have a constant size:
'variable length array in structure' extension will never be supported
flow.o.log:flow.c:159:40: error: fields must have a constant size:
'variable length array in structure' extension will never be supported
flow.o.log:flow.c:299:34: error: fields must have a constant size:
'variable length array in structure' extension will never be supported
flow.o.log:flow.c:663:37: error: fields must have a constant size:
'variable length array in structure' extension will never be supported
flow.o.log:flow.c:698:34: error: fields must have a constant size:
'variable length array in structure' extension will never be supported
flow.o.log:flow.c:736:37: error: fields must have a constant size:
'variable length array in structure' extension will never be supported
flow.o.log:flow.c:786:37: error: fields must have a constant size:
'variable length array in structure' extension will never be supported
main.o.log:main.c:720:34: error: fields must have a constant size:
'variable length array in structure' extension will never be supported
Yes, that’s right folks, clang does not support dynamically sized arrays
and never will (!) as unequivocally stated by their error message: “extension
will never be supported“ (“never”? really?). (Take that picolispers! This
reminds me of the taunting Frenchman in Monty Python’s Holy Grail: “No
chance, English bedwetting types!”)
But gcc does support this; so, back to gcc. The objects build fine with gcc,
but then we run into a problem in the link step.
gcc48 -o ../bin/picolisp -m32 -rdynamic main.o gc.o apply.o flow.o
sym.o subr.o big.o io.o net.o tab.o -lm
/usr/local/bin/ld: skipping incompatible //usr/lib/libm.so when
searching for -lm
/usr/local/bin/ld: skipping incompatible //usr/lib/libm.a when searching for -lm
/usr/local/bin/ld: cannot find -lm
/usr/local/bin/ld: skipping incompatible
/usr/local/lib/gcc48/gcc/x86_64-portbld-freebsd10.1/4.8.4/libgcc.a
when searching for -lgcc
/usr/local/bin/ld: skipping incompatible //usr/lib/libgcc.a when
searching for -lgcc
/usr/local/bin/ld: cannot find -lgcc
/usr/local/bin/ld: skipping incompatible
/usr/local/lib/gcc48/gcc/x86_64-portbld-freebsd10.1/4.8.4/../../../libgcc_sso
when searching for -lgcc_s
/usr/local/bin/ld: skipping incompatible //usr/lib/libgcc_s.so when
searching for -lgcc_s
/usr/local/bin/ld: cannot find -lgcc_s
/usr/local/bin/ld: skipping incompatible /lib/libc.so.7 when searching
for /lib/libc.so.7
/usr/local/bin/ld: cannot find /lib/libc.so.7
/usr/local/bin/ld: skipping incompatible /usr/lib/libc_nonshared.a
when searching for /usr/lib/libc_nonshared.a
/usr/local/bin/ld: cannot find /usr/lib/libc_nonshared.a
/usr/local/bin/ld: skipping incompatible /usr/lib/libssp_nonshared.a
when searching for /usr/lib/libssp_nonshared.a
