Re: 1.17.21 on OS X

[Guillem Jover <guillem@debian.org>]

Hi!

On Tue, 2014-11-11 at 23:12:48 +0000, Dominyk Tiller wrote:
> I'm trying to compile the latest dpkg, 1.17.21 on OS X, but keep running
> into this persistent error. It could be expected given the relative
> newness of this release, but thought I'd kick the configure process
> upstream for a better insight.

Yes, this is a problem in the code that I've fixed now locally, will
be included in 1.17.22. I try to support other Unices that I don't have
access to, from documentation, but that has this kind of risk. :)

I've looked for free access from time to time to porter boxes or
automated build systems for at least:

  Mac OS X
  Solaris, OpenSolaris, etc
  AIX
  HP-UX

to at least make sure the thing still builds, but ideally to not port
blindly. I'd appreciate information if someone knows about such
access.

(And actually also for OpenBSD, NetBSD and DragonFlyBSD systems, as I
don't have space for so many VMs locally.)

> Using a patch to fix the Perl location on OS X, and the MD5/SHA1/SHA256
> tool use, but nothing that should halt or interfere drastically with
> compile as far as I can see. The error seems to be unrelated.

> Shall attach the build process and the patch, both of which are
> hopefully some use.

Thanks for both. I was aware of some of the things that need to be
fixed from the BSD port collections, the Fink project, OpenSolaris
ports, etc, which I regularly scan, but did not have time yet to
integrate fixes in a generic way; I'd like to do that for 1.18.x, so
that a pristine dpkg can be used on other systems out of the box. But
this usually requires others to test stuff and report back which gets
the iterations cycles a bit long. For example there's a reported test
suite failure on Fink that I'd like to fix, but having access to such
a system would make things much easier.

Thanks,
Guillem