Re: AC_HEADER_MAJOR vs. glibc 2.25(-to-be)

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[adding libvirt list, as this is what sparked my investigations so far
today]

On 09/13/2016 04:36 PM, Eric Blake wrote:

> One other possibility that distros can do is to prime a config.site
> file, with $ac_cv_header_sys_types_h_makedev=no, to forcefully bypass
> the configure check that is normally done where <sys/types.h> would
> warn.  It has to be in config.site, because non-glibc systems do not
> want to do that.

Okay, I have confirmed that this prime-the-cache idea DOES work, using
libvirt.git commit 419bc8cf (one commit prior to d53fa838 which
installed a hack into libvirt to force the use of -Werror for the
duration of AC_HEADER_MAJOR [1]).  By itself, './configure' succeeds but
leaves MAJOR_IN_SYSMACROS undefined, which results in a build failure
later in libvirt; but when run as './configure
ac_cv_header_sys_types_h_makedev=no', MAJOR_IN_SYSMACROS gets defined
and the build succeeds.

I want to remove the libvirt hack (not all compilers understand -Werror,
even if libvirt is only ever built by gcc or clang), and my experiment
was enough to prove that:

1. distros that provide a config.site file can use this file to avoid
the problem, even for packages that have not yet rebuilt with a
new-enough autoconf to fix the issue

2. autoconf and gnulib should indeed be fixed to probe for
<sys/sysmacros.h> _prior_ to probing for whether makedev() exists in
<sys/type.h>, rather than the 2.69 logic of only checking for
<sys/sysmacros.h> if makedev() was not found earlier.

Of course, the libvirt hack should not be reverted until autoconf and
gnulib have the final solution in place.

> 
> Meanwhile, even without an autoconf release scheduled, I am currently
> working on patching the existing autoconf macro and documentation to
> match the current situation.  It sounds to me like we want the following
> logic:
> 
> If <sys/sysmacros.h> exists and defines major(), use that,
> else if <sys/mkdev.h> exists, use that,
> else if <sys/types.h> defines major(), use that,
> else not available

The current autoconf code assumes that if <sys/sysmacros.h> exists, then
it defines major()/minor()/makedev(); I think that assumption is still
safe.  Where autoconf was wrong was that it was not even probing for the
existence of <sys/sysmacros.h> if it found that <sys/types.h> was enough
to pollute the namespace with the three macros.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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