>Number:         4544
>Category:       pkg
>Synopsis:       emacs fails to build on mips
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       critical
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    gnats-admin (GNATS administrator)
>State:          open
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   net
>Arrival-Date:   Wed Nov 19 08:35:01 1997
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     
>Organization:
	
>Release:        NetBSD 1.3_ALPHA at 19971115
>Environment:
	
System: NetBSD Cup.DSG.Stanford.EDU 1.3_ALPHA NetBSD 1.3_ALPHA (PLACEBO) #2: Wed Oct 22 16:43:14 PDT 1997 jonathan@Whisk.DSG.Stanford.EDU:/usr/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/PLACEBO i386

The bug is on a mips but I cant rebuild an editor there.. :)

>Description:

The standard FSF Emacs 20.2 sources build cleanly on NetBSD/pmax, but
the emacs pkg fails to build at all on a mips. that makes sharing
emacs Mi files hard, because the FSF distribution paths are so different.

The failure is that emacs 20.2 doesn't support un-exec'ing on *BSD
mips CPUs using ELF format.  The NetBSD config just doens't work for
non-unexec'ing platforms.  A non-unexec'ed emacs needs to read in the
complied elisp each time it starts up.

The NetBSD-ized emacs compiles and links the C code properly but the
resulting temacs ccannot find its elisp files when first started up to
prefrobnicate the DOC file.

>How-To-Repeat:

	get up-to-date pkgsrc package and try a `make' of emacs on a pmax.
>Fix:

Longer term, of course,  fixing unexec is the right thing to do.

The FSF sources for unexec on mips elf are a mess (at least two
subtly different versions, one for sony NEWS and one for IRIX) and we
haven't found time to cons up a  version that works.

Meanwhile, putting back the pathnames and predefines for non-unexec'ed
emaces that are in the standard FSF emacs makefiles, surrounded with
tests for ${ARCH} == mips, should at least build a workign unexec'ed emacs.

Help?? I don't know how or why the package files are set up as they
are, and I don't want to change anything that might break other ports.
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: