Compile failure of 4.8.1 on Snow Leopard

[egmont]

Mac OS X 10.6.8, compiling fails with

[snip]

CC util.o
CC selcodepage.o
CCLD mc

Undefined symbols:

"_posix_fallocate", referenced from:

_vfs_preallocate in libmcviewer.a(vfs.o)

ld: symbol(s) not found
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make[3]: * [mc] Error 1
make[2]: * [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: * [all-recursive] Error 1
make: * [all] Error 2
$

4.8.0 compiled fine on the same system. 4.8.1 compiles fine on Linux (Ubuntu 10.04).

[egmont]

config.h ends up having "#define HAVE_POSIX_FALLOCATE 1"

Relevant bits from config.log:
configure:21630: gcc -std=gnu99 -c -g -O2 -I/System/Library/Frameworks/CoreFoundation.framework/Headers -I$(top_builddir)/intl -I$(top_srcdir)/intl conftest.c >&5
conftest.c: In function 'main':
conftest.c:160: warning: implicit declaration of function 'posix_fallocate'

It seems the configure test compiles to an object file only (which succeeds) and doesn't link against libc (to create a runnable binary, which would fail)

[egmont]

And there's also another, completely independent problem on mac:

Making all in man
Makefile:790: warning: overriding commands for target `mc.1'
Makefile:412: warning: ignoring old commands for target `mc.1'
Makefile:796: warning: overriding commands for target `mcedit.1'
Makefile:414: warning: ignoring old commands for target `mcedit.1'
Makefile:802: warning: overriding commands for target `mcview.1'
Makefile:416: warning: ignoring old commands for target `mcview.1'
Making all in es
Makefile:582: warning: overriding commands for target `mc.1'
Makefile:370: warning: ignoring old commands for target `mc.1'
cd ../../.. && /bin/sh ./config.status doc/man/es/mc.1
config.status: creating doc/man/es/mc.1
stat: illegal option -- c
usage: stat [-FlLnqrsx] [-f format] [-t timefmt] [file ...]
usage: date [-jnu] [-d dst] [-r seconds] [-t west] [-v[+|-]val[ymwdHMS]] ... 
            [-f fmt date | [[[mm]dd]HH]MM[[cc]yy][.ss]] [+format]
sed: 1: "mc.1": invalid command code m
make[4]: *** [mc.1] Error 1
make[3]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[2]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make: *** [all] Error 2

It's so great that stat(1) and date(1) on mac and linux are totally incomaptbie :S

[andrew_b]

Nobody of MC developers has Mac OS. So... patches are welcome! :)

[egmont]

As for fallocate, the configure script should not only compile an object file, but a whole binary, and see if that succeeds. Unfortunately I don't know hardly anything about autoconf and friends and have no clue how to do it.

As for the man pages, I'm wondering what changed since 4.8.0, I'll have to check, maybe that change can be reverted.

Before the next release (e.g. 4.8.1.1 as the first major stable of the branch) I'd be happy to test the tarballs on mac, just please ping me :)

[egmont]

fix fallocate detection for mac

[egmont]

For properly detecting that fallocate is not available, please see the attached patch.
(If applied on top of the tarball, autoconf has to be re-run obviously.)

[egmont]

The stat and date story seems to be more complicated than I thought, I've created ticket #2692 for that.

I suggest let's leave this one for the fallocate issue (that simple one-liner patch) only.

[farrokhi]

Provided patch does not solve the problem. The only workaround for me was manually removing "#define HAVE_POSIX_FALLOCATE 1" from config.h.

[egmont]

farrokhi: Could you please provide more details about your system, as well as you exactly did? In case you started off from a tarball and applied the patch, did you remember to run autoconf before running configure?

Autoconf generates a different configure file, one that does not only try to compile the short testing source code to an object file, but actually tries to link it against libc. If posix_fallocate does not exist (such as on my Mac) then this fails and hence the generated config.h will not contain that line. If linking against libc succeeds then the system apparently has a functioning posix_fallocate and it's okay to use it.

[slavazanko]

May be, will helpfull this link: ​http://www.mail-archive.com/freebsd-hackers@freebsd.org/msg66053.html

[egmont]

Yes thanks, that thread is useful, it shows how to do it on Mac, rather than disabling the feature.
However, since it has to be done differently, the configure bits of detecting (posix_)fallocate availability still needs to be fixed as part of the whole solution ;)

[egmont]

manpage of mac's fcntl():
​http://developer.apple.com/library/IOs/#documentation/System/Conceptual/ManPages_iPhoneOS/man2/fcntl.2.html

[farrokhi]

egmont: running autogen.sh after applying the patch, I am now seeing stat/date error.

[egmont]

farrokhi: This is good news, this means that the fallocate fix works for you too.

[angel_il]

branch: ​2689_bsd_fallocate_fix

Please review

egmont: thank you!

[angel_il]

fixed: dca8a412bcace348dc57f58ca82fe0866ba8d1df

stable-candidate?

[angel_il]

4.8.1-stable: a6ca3c289994a3a9ab8f481582e2632109b759f0 (cherry-picked)