On Mon, Jan 12, 2026 at 03:42:31PM +0100, Patrice Dumas wrote:
> On Sun, Jan 11, 2026 at 06:18:25PM +0100, Bruno Haible via Bug reports for
> the GNU Texinfo documentation system wrote:
> > On platforms where gcc (or clang) is not the native compiler, it can be
> > impossible to build texinfo with gcc.
>
> I am not surprised (this is for makeinfo/texi2any only, not for the Info
> reader). For Perl C and to have consistent link and compile flags, we
> now use the Perl flags for all the libraries and executables. Therefore
> it has become difficult to modify the flags or the compiler. Note,
> however, that using a different compiler (and different flags) than the
> one used to build Perl was not supposed to work since a long time,
> according to Perl documentation, although it worked in practice on some
> platforms.
>
> To change the compiler and flags used, you need to first have a Perl
> built with this compiler and flags compatible with what you'll want to
> set for texi2any, and then build texinfo against this Perl.
>
> I do not think that we can really do anything on that matter, except
> maybe improve documentation.
It still should build without setting PERL_EXT_CC, if the compiler reported
Perl exists and works. From the "texinfo-7.2.90 on AIX" thread:
Bruno Haible wrote:
> Gavin Smith wrote:
> > Could you please provide the error messages from when you tried it without
> > PERL_EXT_CC set? Did it fail due to a non-existent compiler, or for another
> > reason?
>
> If PERL_EXT_CC isn't set, it apparently uses $CC instead. I get the same
> error:
Something's clearly going wrong here for gcc to be used instead of Perl's
reported cc ("xlc_r").
