On Fri, 20 Mar 2020 19:14:59 +0100
Simon Sobisch <simonsobisch@xxxxxx> wrote:
> Everyone is invited to already test the current version (not much
> changed since December 2019, just in case you've tested it)
Thanks, Simon.
I updated ^/branches/gnucobol-3.x and almost built it. There were two
issues I would like to report.
1. cJSON.
* Not packaged on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
* built from source, per README. cmake complained verbosely about
libcurl, which it "requires", but the bulid produced seemingly good
output anyway:
/usr/bin/cmake: /usr/local/lib/libcurl.so.4: no version
information available (required by /usr/bin/cmake)
* I know cJSON is not required. I also doubt I'll be the last one
to encounter this particular hurdle. 30 minutes of reading cmake
documentation failed to reveal any way to print where it looks for
libraries, or to control where it looks for libraries. Feh.
2. Ye Olde help2man. What's the trick again?
$ ../configure --prefix=$prefix > log && make > log
ar: `u' modifier ignored since `D' is the default (see `U')
ar: `u' modifier ignored since `D' is the default (see `U')
help2man: can't get `--help' info from ../pre-inst-env cobcrun -q
Try `--no-discard-stderr' if option outputs to stderr
[^^^^ It's unclear what this refers to --jkl]
WARNING: 'help2man' is missing on your system.
You should only need it if you modified a dependency of a man
page. You may want to install the GNU Help2man package:
<https://www.gnu.org/software/help2man/>
make[2]: *** [cobcrun.1] Error 127
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make: *** [all] Error 2
This is the missing-not-missing problem:
$ which help2man
/usr/bin/help2man
$ help2man --version
GNU help2man 1.47.3
...
Of course, the real problem with help2man isn't that it's missing. The
real problem is that it's used in the first place, ever.
One way or the other, IMHO in the coming release it should be possible
for the user to run configure successfully on a system on which all
dependencies are installed. (It would be good to get rid of the ar(1)
warnings, too.)
Recap:
1. What should we do about cJSON? Perhaps a helper script in
build_aux/?
2. How to make help2man work reliably?
3. What to do about the ar(1) messages?
4. Extra credit: How to eradicate the need for help2man?
--jkl
