Debian 2.1 configuration problem
After reading what I've written below, this appears to be a De-
bian bug centered around the installation of "ld." I've decided
to post it to chat anyway, hoping that another Debian/gnat user
can offer help.
I recently installed Debian 2.1 on a new machine using a CDROM
set from Cheapbytes. The CDROM distribution has several "pro-
files" that are available to install a base set of packages. The
profile that I chose installed Debian's "libc6-dev" package and
some packages that depend on libc6-dev. Unfortunately, none of
the profiles include gnat :( After the base profile was in-
stalled, I installed Mark Eichen's excellent gnat package, and
things have not been right since!
The rest of my cry for help is probably of no interest to chat
readers not using Debian, as the problem appears to be confined
to how gnatlink calls ld and is unlikely to occur on other sys-
tems. The history is thus: After writing several procedures
(which passed Debian's gnatgcc 3.10p compiler's syntax checks
(gnatgcc -c -gnatv *.adb),) I attempted to compile an executable.
Linking failed, with about 15 undefined references similar to
those experienced with libc library mismatches. ld indicated
that it was calling "crt1.o" which is provided by Debian's
libc6-dev package...and since there was nothing that I was par-
ticularly interested in that package; I removed it. ld still at-
tempts to call crt1.o, even though crt1.o is not installed on the
system. I reinstalled the package that provides ld without any
positive result: ld still attempts to call crt1.o. I reinstalled
gnat with no change. In desperation, I installed the gnat 3.11p
binary on top of the Debian packages, and still no change.
In retrospect, since the linker is not part of GNU CC it was
pointless to think that reinstalling or installing a gcc package
would solve the problem. I thought that I might get around the
problem by passing some options to the linker, but I haven't fig-
ured out how to yet by reading the gnat supersecret documentation
(that I swear to take to my grave with me :)
If someone could point me in the right direction to pass options
to the linker using gnatmake and family, I would appreciate it.
Perhaps if you know how the linker works, you can tell me if this
problem is something I can work around until I get it fixed.
Thanks for your patience,
--
Scott Ingram
Sonar Processing and Analysis Laboratory
Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
Reply to: