Re: texinfo-7.2.90 on AIX

On Sun, Jan 11, 2026 at 10:05:23PM +0100, Bruno Haible via Bug reports for the GNU Texinfo documentation system wrote:
> Gavin Smith wrote:
> > Could you please provide the error messages from when you tried it without
> > PERL_EXT_CC set?  Did it fail due to a non-existent compiler, or for another
> > reason?
> 
> If PERL_EXT_CC isn't set, it apparently uses $CC instead. I get the same error:

What is happening in that case is not good, and the consequence of
having added Perl flags everywhere even if XS modules cannot be built,
and not having this special case better handled.

I'll try to come up with something saner, as it should be possible to
build part of the C code.  Although the resulting libraries/binaries
would be lacking many features, be able to convert to HTML only, without
proper index sorting.  Since the code produced is not really useful, it
is also possible to go back to the way it was before, if XS is disabled
do not even recurse in tta/C.

> This configure test produced the answer "no", because it attempted to use the
> 'xlc_r' compiler for this task:

It could have succeeded actually.  The compiler is present, the build
options do not look bad, but there is still an error (I try to look that
error up in the internet but there is nothing relevant, which is quite
strange, I would have explected a table with errors explained).

> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> checking whether we can build Perl extension (XS) modules... 
> 	rm -f  TestXS.c
> 	rm -rf .libs _libs
> 	rm -f  TestXS.la
> rm -f ./so_locations
> 	rm -f *.o
> 	rm -f *.lo
> Target "clean" is up to date.
> 	/bin/sh '/home/haible/texinfo-7.2.90/tta/perl/CheckXS/build-aux/missing' xsubpp -typemap /usr/opt/perl5/lib/5.28.1/ExtUtils/typemap ../../../../tta/perl/CheckXS/TestXS.xs > TestXS.xsc && mv TestXS.xsc TestXS.c
> 	/bin/sh ./libtool  --tag=CC   --mode=compile xlc_r -DPACKAGE_NAME=\"GNU\ Texinfo\" -DPACKAGE_TARNAME=\"texinfo\" -DPACKAGE_VERSION=\"7.2.90\" -DPACKAGE_STRING=\"GNU\ Texinfo\ 7.2.90\" -DPACKAGE_BUGREPORT=\"\" -DPACKAGE_URL=\"https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/\" -DPACKAGE=\"texinfo\" -DVERSION=\"7.2.90\" -DHAVE_STDIO_H=1 -DHAVE_STDLIB_H=1 -DHAVE_STRING_H=1 -DHAVE_INTTYPES_H=1 -DHAVE_STDINT_H=1 -DHAVE_STRINGS_H=1 -DHAVE_SYS_STAT_H=1 -DHAVE_SYS_TYPES_H=1 -DHAVE_UNISTD_H=1 -DSTDC_HEADERS=1 -DHAVE_DLFCN_H=1 -DLT_OBJDIR=\".libs/\" -I. -I../../../../tta/perl/CheckXS  -DXS_VERSION=\"7.2.90\" -I/usr/opt/perl5/lib/5.28.1/aix-thread-multi/CORE  -D_ALL_SOURCE -D_ANSI_C_SOURCE -D_POSIX_SOURCE -qmaxmem=-1 -qnoansialias -qlanglvl=extc99 -DUSE_NATIVE_DLOPEN -DNEED_PTHREAD_INIT -q32 -D_LARGE_FILES   
  -MT TestXS_la-TestXS.lo -MD -MP -MF .deps/TestXS_la-TestXS.Tpo -c -o TestXS_la-TestXS.lo `test -f 'TestXS.c' || echo '../../../../tta/perl/CheckXS/'`TestXS.c
> libtool: compile:  xlc_r "-DPACKAGE_NAME=\"GNU Texinfo\"" -DPACKAGE_TARNAME=\"texinfo\" -DPACKAGE_VERSION=\"7.2.90\" "-DPACKAGE_STRING=\"GNU Texinfo 7.2.90\"" -DPACKAGE_BUGREPORT=\"\" -DPACKAGE_URL=\"https://www.gnu.org/software/texinfo/\" -DPACKAGE=\"texinfo\" -DVERSION=\"7.2.90\" -DHAVE_STDIO_H=1 -DHAVE_STDLIB_H=1 -DHAVE_STRING_H=1 -DHAVE_INTTYPES_H=1 -DHAVE_STDINT_H=1 -DHAVE_STRINGS_H=1 -DHAVE_SYS_STAT_H=1 -DHAVE_SYS_TYPES_H=1 -DHAVE_UNISTD_H=1 -DSTDC_HEADERS=1 -DHAVE_DLFCN_H=1 -DLT_OBJDIR=\".libs/\" -I. -I../../../../tta/perl/CheckXS -DXS_VERSION=\"7.2.90\" -I/usr/opt/perl5/lib/5.28.1/aix-thread-multi/CORE -D_ALL_SOURCE -D_ANSI_C_SOURCE -D_POSIX_SOURCE -qmaxmem=-1 -qnoansialias -qlanglvl=extc99 -DUSE_NATIVE_DLOPEN -DNEED_PTHREAD_INIT -q32 -D_LARGE_FILES -MT TestXS_la-TestXS.lo -MD -M
 P -MF .deps/TestXS_la-TestXS.Tpo -c TestXS.c  -fPIC -DPIC -o .libs/TestXS_la-TestXS.o
> xlc_r: 1501-208 (S) command option D is missing a subargument
> make: The error code from the last command is 1.
> 
> 
> Stop.
> checking whether we can build Perl extension (XS) modules... no
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
> Find attached the log files.
> 
> Bruno