Bug#31970: boot-floppies "make" fails

["Leslie J. Button" <lbut@stny.lrun.com>]

Package: boot-floppies
Version: 2.1.4

When I run "make" in the "/usr/src/boot-floppies" directory, the build
fails, apparently when "scripts/rootdisk/generate_library" is invoked. 
The error message produced is

cc: /usr/lib/libc_pic/soinit.o: No such file or directory
cc: /usr/lib/libc_pic/sofini.o: No such file or directory
cc: /usr/lib/libc_pic/interp.o: No such file or directory
make[1]: *** [root.bin] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/boot-floppies'
make: *** [build] Error 2

"make check" works OK.  I'm running Debian 2.1, kernel 2.0.34, on a
Pentium desktop machine.

The error message suggests files missing in /usr/lib/libc_pic. On my
system at least, I find files named "soinit.so", "sofini.so", and
"interp.so", but no corresponding ".o" files.  ("dselect" gave me
whatever "libc_pic" it thought was necessary for the "boot-floppies"
package.) I tried changing the "rootdisks.sh" script so as to use the
".so" files instead of the ".o" files:
 
% diff rootdisk.sh.modified rootdisk.sh.orig 
426,428c426,428
<       $scripts/generate_library $libcso "/usr/lib/libc_pic/soinit.so \
<           /usr/lib/libc_pic.a /usr/lib/libc_pic/sofini.so \
<           /usr/lib/libc_pic/interp.so $R/lib/$ldlib -e __libc_main" \
---
>       $scripts/generate_library $libcso "/usr/lib/libc_pic/soinit.o \
>           /usr/lib/libc_pic.a /usr/lib/libc_pic/sofini.o \
>           /usr/lib/libc_pic/interp.o $R/lib/$ldlib -e __libc_main" \

I don't fully understand what's going on in the "boot-floppies" scripts,
but at least this change allowed the "make" to go to completion, and
produced a rescue disk that was capable of booting my desktop machine. 
Neither this rescue disk, nor a 'safe' version which I also made, was
capable of booting an IBM ThinkPad 380Z, which is why I started this
whole project.  (See bug report #31509.)

Les Button
lbut@stny.lrun.com