Re: Build breaking on autoreconf

Hi Tom,

It appears you are trying to build newlib for x86_64-linux.  This is a
special configuration since newlib is built cross-platform and skipped for
the host platform (gcc is the one to use when you have no cross-platform
issues
to consider).  gcc also supports Linux syscalls and has a much larger set
of functionality.  As you have noted,  configuration should occur from the
top-level directory.  When you are building a native newlib, you have to
specify: --with-newlib as an extra configuration parameter, otherwise
newlib is skipped.

That said, there used to be host newlib support for i[3456]86-linux that
used linux syscalls and had additional functionality compared to basic
newlib, but that has been removed as it used a combination of host C
headers and newlib headers that broke whenever gcc changed the headers.  As
for a straight host newlib, it is not officially supported.  For example,
there is no support in libgloss to supply syscalls or start up code
(crt0.S).  You might be able to bolt together something yourself or use
libnosys to get stub syscalls.

-- Jeff J.

On Wed, Aug 21, 2024 at 12:40 PM Kuchler Tom <[email protected]>
wrote:

> Dear maintainers,
>
> I was trying to port newlib to an OS I'm working on and ran into an issue
> with autoreconf.
> When I was looking into it it seems that it is an issue with the current
> newlib, but may be that it is also me not understanding autoreconf.
>
> My current suspicion is that it is probably a user failure on my side, but
> I can't find anything related that is up to date with the new version, so I
> though I'd ask if this is expected behavior and how I should fix it or let
> you know about it in case it is not expected behavior.
>
> The issue I ran into is that stamp-libc-math-objects fails with ar errors
> as in the error log attached.
> I cloned the code from https://sourceware.org/git/newlib-cygwin.git and
> it happens on the latest cygwin release (3.5.3) but I also checked it on
> newlib-4.4.0 and newlib-4.3.0
> I make a new folder next to the cloned folder and execute
> ../newlib-cygwin/newlib/configure --host=x86_64-linux && make all
> With a fresh clone the build finishes without any errors.
> If I run autoreconf in the top level directory it still builds, but if I
> run it in newlib-cygwin/newlib then it breaks.
>
> I use the recommended version 2.69 of autoreconf.
> I also saw in the FAQ that the configuration is supposed to happen from
> the top level folder, but if I do that it does not build anything at all,
> so that might be an issue,
>
> but it still works if I don't run autoreconf which is what confuses me.
>
> Best regards,
> Tom
>
>