Re: Fixing buildd issues on ppc64el

[Aurelien Jarno <aurel32@debian.org>]

Hi all,

On Thu, Aug 21, 2014 at 03:55:49PM +0200, Frédéric Bonnard wrote:
> Hi all/Aurelien,
> I'd like to help fixing issues found during buildd of packages on ppc64el :
> https://buildd.debian.org/status/architecture.php?a=ppc64el&suite=sid
> 

I have just found that the autoreconf/libtool issue has been magically
"fixed" by the following binutils change:

| binutils (2.24.51.20140903-1) unstable; urgency=medium
| .
|   * Snapshot, taken from the trunk 20140903.
|   * Try to work around binutils-multiarch build failure on sh4 by disabling
|     hppa targets for the binutils-multiarch build. Addresses: #758830.
|   * Enable powerpc targets for ppc64el. Closes: #760395.

The last line changed the supported emulations from:
| ld: supported emulations: elf64lppc elf32lppc elf32lppclinux elf32lppcsim
to
| ld: supported emulations: elf64lppc elf32lppc elf32lppclinux elf32lppcsim elf32ppclinux elf32ppc elf32ppcsim elf64ppc

Older versions of libtool code in configure script do the following:
|      case $host in
|        x86_64-*linux*)
|          LD="${LD-ld} -m elf_x86_64"
|          ;;
|        ppc*-*linux*|powerpc*-*linux*)
|          LD="${LD-ld} -m elf64ppc"
|          ;;

So powerpc64le-linux-gnu is wrongly detected as elf64ppc (instead of
elf64lppc). This value is then passed to ld to check if it supports
shared libraries. The above binutils change make this check to succeed.
This value is not used outside of configure script, so this should be
relatively safe and anyway I think ld would refuse to link ppc64 BE and
LE objects together.

In the short term, that will help to build a few hundred packages,
though I think this bug should still be fixed. That's just less urgent
now.

Aurelien

-- 
Aurelien Jarno                          GPG: 4096R/1DDD8C9B
aurelien@aurel32.net                 http://www.aurel32.net