xlC compile errors: undefined symbol (irssi/perl)

[LGee]

Hello,

this is my first post here ;-)

I have started compiling irssi on AIX 5.3 TL8 with xlC 10.1.

The following components are already compiled with exit 0:

- pkg-config-0.23
- gettext-0.17
- glib-2.19.0 # this was a hard one, I had to comment out a few lines in the code to get it working ;-)

I have problems with

irssi-0.8.13-svn (2008-11-12)

In src/perl/common, make fails with missing symbols:

Making all in perl
        for dir in common irc ui textui; do  cd $dir &&  if [ ! -f Makefile ]; then  /usr/bin/perl Makefile.PL INSTALLDIRS=perl PREFIX=/usr/local;  fi &&  (make CC="xlc_r -D_ALL_SOURCE" CCFLAGS="-D_ALL_SOURCE -D_ANSI_C_SOURCE -D_POSIX_SOURCE -qmaxmem=16384 -qnoansialias -DUSE_NATIVE_DLOPEN -DNEED_PTHREAD_INIT -q32 -D_LARGE_FILES -qlonglong  -I/usr/opt/perl5/lib/5.8.2/aix-thread-multi/CORE  -g"  ||  make CC="xlc_r -D_ALL_SOURCE" CCFLAGS="-D_ALL_SOURCE -D_ANSI_C_SOURCE -D_POSIX_SOURCE -qmaxmem=16384 -qnoansialias -DUSE_NATIVE_DLOPEN -DNEED_PTHREAD_INIT -q32 -D_LARGE_FILES -qlonglong  -I/usr/opt/perl5/lib/5.8.2/aix-thread-multi/CORE  -g" ) &&  cd ..;  done
        rm -f blib/arch/auto/Irssi/Irssi.so
        LD_RUN_PATH="" ld  -bhalt:4 -bM:SRE -bI:/usr/opt/perl5/lib/5.8.2/aix-thread-multi/CORE/perl.exp -bE:Irssi.exp -bnoentry -lpthreads -lc_r Channel.o  Core.o  Expando.o  Ignore.o  Irssi.o  Log.o  Masks.o  Query.o  Rawlog.o  Server.o  Settings.o  -o blib/arch/auto/Irssi/Irssi.so
ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .irssi_ref_object
ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .nicklist_getnicks
... (snip)
ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .perl_get_api_version
ld: 0711-345 Use the -bloadmap or -bnoquiet option to obtain more information.
make: 1254-004 The error code from the last command is 8.


I have collected a few hints found on the web (including adding -bnoquiet as suggested ;-), but unfortunately, I can only test them in the evening on my machine.

As I see, this linker problem is quite common on AIX. So the real question is if there is a 'generic approach' to handling this problem.

regards
LGee

[Michael]

Well I have compiled irssi - but maybe using gcc.

The way some opensource packages are developed makes porting hard. libtool often seems to get in the way.

Recently I was compiling apache2, and it failed with gcc. A bad library search path. Using xlC - older than yours though, version 8 I think, it compiled fine.

Generally, the fix is to specify environment variables to ./configure. But each package requires it's own approach. Unfortunately.

I shall be on the road the coming week, so I wont have time to look at how I built irssi myself, but I'll let you know asap.

[Michael]

This is what I got to compile last March:
michael@x054:[/data/prj/irssi-0.8.12]irssi -?
Usage:
  irssi [OPTION...]

Help Options:
  -?, --help                  Show help options

Application Options:
  --config=PATH               Configuration file location (~/.irssi/config)
  --home=PATH                 Irssi home dir location (~/.irssi)
  -c, --connect=SERVER        Automatically connect to server/network
  -w, --password=PASSWORD     Autoconnect password
  -p, --port=PORT             Autoconnect port
  -!, --noconnect             Disable autoconnecting
  -n, --nick                  Specify nick to use
  -h, --hostname              Specify host name to use
  -d, --dummy                 Use the dummy terminal mode
  -v, --version               Display irssi version



drwxr-xr-x    5 michael  staff          4096 Mar 21 2008  irssi-0.8.12
-rw-r--r--    1 michael  staff        935918 Mar 21 2008  irssi-0.8.12.tar.bz2
drwxr-xr-x    6 michael  staff          4096 Mar 30 2008  irssi-0.8.13-svn
-rw-r--r--    1 michael  staff       1382591 Mar 30 2008  irssi-20080328.tar.gz


I see the *.13.svn directory as well. Need to check that. I have not worked with it much since then. Maybe the version ending in .12 is better for now.

[LGee]

Well... it proved easier than I thought.

Here is the recipe:


CC=/usr/vac/bin/cc_r ./configure --disable-ipv6 --prefix=/usr/local --with-perl-staticlib


This will compile just fine if you edit the following file:

src/fe-common/core/printtext.h

and remove the lines 37-57 (tests for the compiler) and the closing #endif on line 116, of course.

Well, running it is far from perfect:

$ irssi
exec(): 0509-036 Cannot load program irssi because of the following errors:
        0509-150   Dependent module libperl.a(libperl.o) could not be loaded.
        0509-022 Cannot load module libperl.a(libperl.o).
        0509-026 System error: A file or directory in the path name does not exist.

However,


 $ LIBPATH=$LIBPATH:/usr/opt/perl5/lib/5.8.2/aix-thread-multi/CORE/ irssi

starts the program.

23:23 CTCP VERSION reply from LGee: irssi v0.8.13-svn - running on AIX 004FF48A4C00