Re: groff 1.24.0.rc1 available for evaluation

Hi Branden,

Here is my third problem report.  I already spent hours of working time
on this one, performing more than a dozen cycles of adding of modifying
a tweak, than running the next build attempt, but all these attempts
crashed at the same place in grodvi/dvi.o :

----- 8< ----- schnipp ----- >8 ----- 8< ----- schnapp ----- >8 -----
c++  -O2 -pipe    -o grodvi src/devices/grodvi/dvi.o libdriver.a
	libgroff.a  lib/libgnu.a -lm
ld: warning: libgroff.a: archive member 'libgnu.a' is neither ET_REL
	nor LLVM bitcode
ld: warning: unicode.cpp(libgroff_a-unicode.o:(to_utf8_string(unsigned int))
	in archive libgroff.a): warning: sprintf() is often misused,
	please use snprintf()
ld: warning: symbol.cpp(libgroff_a-symbol.o:(symbol::symbol(char const*, int))
	in archive libgroff.a): warning: strcpy() is almost always misused,
	please use strlcpy()
ld: warning: symbol.cpp(libgroff_a-symbol.o:(concat(symbol, symbol))
	in archive libgroff.a): warning: strcat() is almost always misused,
	please use strlcat()
ld: error: undefined symbol: vfzprintf
>>> referenced by fprintf.c
>>>               libgnu_a-fprintf.o:(rpl_fprintf) in archive lib/libgnu.a
>>> did you mean: vfwprintf
>>> defined in: /usr/lib/libc.so.102.2

ld: error: undefined symbol: rpl_strerror
>>> referenced by font.cpp
>>>               libgroff_a-font.o:(font::load(bool)) in archive libgroff.a
c++: error: linker command failed with exit code 1 (use -v to see invocation)
*** Error 1 in . (Makefile:8337 'grodvi')
----- 8< ----- schnipp ----- >8 ----- 8< ----- schnapp ----- >8 -----

Again, i'm lazily quoting my commit message of the fix in my WIP port,
for now.

It would be incredibly helpful to have a mode to simply build groff
without gnulib interference.  To have a mode that simply assumes that
everything groff wants from gnulib is natively available from the
operating system.  Simply let that "native mode" crash when some
feature that is actually needed is missing from the operating system,
and let it be the responsibility of the porter to provide the feature.
I'm almost certain that would just work instantly out of the box,
whereas gnulib causes such massive portability problems that it
takes hours and hours of very difficult work to circumvent.

----- 8< ----- schnipp ----- >8 ----- 8< ----- schnapp ----- >8 -----
commit d8ce56fb213f0ad5c49dde34aa2cca727588c073
Author: Ingo Schwarze <[email protected]>
Date:   Mon Jan 19 14:38:32 2026 +0100

    prevent gnulib from crashing while trying to replace printf(3)
    
    As expected, the newer gnulib used in groff-1.24 has become even
    more aggressive disparaging our printf(3) implementation for multiple
    bad reasons.  Getting it to build at all has become significantly
    harder.  Notably, the pointless quibbles about errno.h and strerror(0)
    appear to make gnulib want to replace the entire printf(3)
    implementation, unless i'm totally misinterpreting what is going
    on in the build - which might be the case because both the gnulib
    code and the ./configure code are utterly unreadable: the former
    because of its totally excessive use of #if directives, the latter
    because it has no indentation whatsoever that could help reading
    it.  So i'm not completely sure this is the minimal fix, though it
    does look like every single one of the seven tweaks is really
    required.
    
    With this fix, the build progresses slightly further.
    Now grodvi builds; it's now grops that explodes.

diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index 856f70a..859454c 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -68,15 +68,20 @@ CONFIGURE_ARGS +=	PAGE=letter
 # from gnulib.  In particular, groff does not use %n, so it would be
 # insane to use an implementation that lacks our %n protection.
 CONFIGURE_ENV +=	gl_cv_func_printf_directive_a=yes \
+			gl_cv_func_printf_directive_b=yes \
 			gl_cv_func_printf_directive_n=yes \
-			gl_cv_func_printf_enomem=yes
+			gl_cv_func_printf_enomem=yes \
+			gl_cv_func_printf_sizes_c23=yes \
+			gl_cv_func_strerror_0_works=yes \
+			gl_cv_header_errno_h_complete=yes
 
 # Disable dependencies of the gnulib fprintf-posix module.
 # Even though we tell ./configure that our fprintf(3) shall be used,
 # gnulib is too stupid to understand that implies the dependecies
 # aren't needed either und would still compile in needless and
 # potentially risky printf(3) code from gnulib.
-CONFIGURE_ENV +=	ac_cv_func_vasnprintf=yes
+CONFIGURE_ENV +=	ac_cv_func_vasnprintf=yes \
+			gl_cv_func_vasnprintf_works=yes
 
 # Even after the above CONFIGURE_ENV cleanup, gnulib compiles in
 # several bogus files that groff does not need, merely because
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Yours,
  Ingo