[fpc-pascal] Re: 2.6.0 for Solaris?

[Mark Morgan Lloyd]

microcode at zoho.com wrote:
> On Wed, 09 May 2012 18:18:59 +0000 Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote:
> 
>> My main role is being a thorn in the side of the core developers when
>> something stops working :-) However I've previously offered to host a
>> (not very fast) system here for compilation etc., and the offer stands.
> 
> What SPARC box(es) do you have? I may be able to host Solaris development
> systems if needed although the SPARC stuff would have to be scheduled since
> I cannot leave them on all the time because of the huge noise and heat
> factor. The Intel box is on most of the time.

I've got a range here: mostly U60 running "in anger", a U80, E4500, 
U10s, a U1, plus some museum pieces I can't find an OS for. I'm also one 
of very few people who've got an SS1000E running Linux SMP, but that's 
not a recent distro and because of library versions (**) I'm not sure 
what if any version of FPC I could get running on it.

** When a program is built, the (Linux) linker puts the actual filenames 
of the .so files it expects to find in the binary- not the names of any 
symlinks. That means that once you've built a binary using standard 
parameters, that binary /requires/ the same collection of .so versions 
that was on the development system... I managed to get around that to 
backport FPC from Solaris 10 to 8 but in general I think it's better to 
start off with a version that runs and work forwards.

I wholeheartedly agree that power, and in the Summer heat, is a massive 
problem. There's only so much we can afford, and even with substantial 
air conditioning things can get pretty unpleasant in my workroom and the 
adjacent machineroom. That's why I'm only able to offer U10s as 
always-up systems, Vincent used one of those for Lazarus two or three 
years ago and I've tried to test both FPC and Lazarus on Linux and 
Solaris fairly regularly since.

>> His point was that Slackware has a far more limited range of binaries and
>> libraries than do more popular distreaux such as Debian/Ubuntu, but it
>> has its uses.
> 
> Right you are.
> 
>>> Anyway, the particular glibc version was probably selected by the ld
>>> linker when compiling the binaries on the builder's machine.
> 
>> I'll check 2.7.1 on SPARC Solaris 8, 10 and Slackware 12 over the next
>> few days. I don't anticipate any problems, and in the interest of getting
>> the OP (who hasn't provided us with a more genteel handle) going I could
>> mail or FTP him tarballs as appropriate. 
> 
> If 2.6.0 is ok for Linux that is good enough for me as far as Slackware
> goes. I may try to rebuild against my glibc or just forget about it on
> Linux and concentrate on Solaris since I prefer to work on Solaris anyway.
> 
> I appreciate your offer for packages but since you or somebody else has
> already pointed me to the buildfaq, I'll try this on my own and when I get
> stuck I'll email the list again. Thanks again for all the help.

You might find it useful to go to the Mantis bug tracker and look at the 
SPARC-related bugs I've reported- use "View Issues", expand "Search", 
select "Mark Morgan Lloyd" from "Reporter" then "Use Filter". You might 
in particular need http://mantis.freepascal.org/view.php?id=18271 when 
getting your initial FPC binary installed on Solaris 10.

When you get to compiling, you might find it necessary to use a command 
line like this:

make NOGDB=1 OPT='-O- -gl'

What that does is tell it to not try to use the optional libgdb in the 
fp text-mode IDE, and it disables optimisation in the compiler binary 
(/not/ the compiler's ability to apply optimisation) so that if 
something goes wrong you can get a useful backtrace.

On Debian, you'll need [checks] build-essential, gdb, libgpmg1-dev, and 
some combination of libncurses5-dev and libncursesw5-dev. If you get as 
far as building Lazarus use trunk (on SPARC) and treat libgtk2.0-dev and 
possibly libqt4pas-dev as prerequisites, if those aren't available (e.g. 
on Slackware) I suggest we continue on the Lazarus mailing list.

-- 
Mark Morgan Lloyd
markMLl .AT. telemetry.co .DOT. uk

[Opinions above are the author's, not those of his employers or colleagues]