Re: Successfully bootstrapped pkgsrc-2025Q4 on Solaris 9/sparc with patches

[John Carr <jcarr%poethecat.com@localhost>]

On 2/7/2026 7:43 AM, Jonathan Perkin wrote:

> * On
>       2026-02-07 at 12:24 GMT, Greg Troxel wrote: 
> > When you post, it would be good to
> >         describe solaris 2.9 in terms of
> >         
> >         release date, EOL date and how it relates to current solaris. 
> >         Also how
> >         
> >         bootstrap/README.Solaris is or is not correct.
> >         
> >       
>       It is very very EOL.  While officially 2014, in reality much
>       earlier than that. 
>       My last bulk build for Solaris 9/sparc is here: 
>        
>       https://mail-index.netbsd.org/pkgsrc-bulk/2006/12/01/msg003723.html 
>       nearly 20 years ago, and even that was a year after the 9/05
>       update release of Solaris 9 which was the last update for it.

It's funny that you mention pkgsrc-2006Q3 here since, as I found with my messing around, that's the last bootstrap that works out of the box for Solaris 8 & Solaris 9 if you're using gcc. The move to cwrappers for SunOS for Q4 causes issues with Sun's ld; something is getting transformed somewhere into incompatible ld options, which still exists today. I haven't spent enough time trying to find a license for Solaris Studio/Sunpro to see if it's just a gcc + Sun ld problem or not.

> You're
>       going to have more issues with third party software support than
>       pkgsrc infrastructure, by a long way.  Especially as support in
>       GCC for Solaris 9 was dropped in GCC 5, so even C++ is going to be
>       a huge burden.
>       
>       
>       This is where a pkgsrc-legacy branch would be useful, but there
>       has never been enough interest in it.

Agreed. Additionally, just getting a post-2.95.3 version of gcc isn't super easy (for 32-bit Solaris 9, at least). Your choices are to find an old mirror of sunfreeware to get 3.4.6, the legacy mirror of OpenCSW for 4.0.2, or roll your own.

That said, too, a caveat out of the gate: I'm not a developer, but a former UNIX admin (now a hobbyist, but professional security architect, so I'm not hands-on-keyboard as much). I had to fumble around a bit to figure this out. 

I haven't gotten any farther (yet) than getting the bootstrap process to compile cleanly. It's going to take a bit of work to go past that, as I don't believe any ssl implementation compiles out of the box on Solaris; getting curl/wget2 working will be fun, but it's needed for any sort of ability to fetch consistently.

System Details:

• OS: Solaris 2.9
• Architecture: 32-bit SPARC (SparcStation 10, sun4m)
• Compiler: gcc-3.4.6 pulled from a sunfreeware mirror, and also gcc-4.0.2 from OpenCSW, per README.Solaris (both configured to use Sun as & ld)
• Bootstrap command: ./bootstrap --cwrappers=no --abi=32

Issues Found & Fixed/Mitigated:

• C99 Math Functions (lang/nawk)
• Problem: isinf() and signbit() declared but not implemented in Solaris 9's libm
• Fix: Added macro implementations in awk.h
• C99 String Conversion (archivers/libarchive)
• Problem: strtoimax()/strtoumax() declared but not implemented in Solaris 9's libc
• Fix: Used strtoll()/strtoull() via inline functions (these are equivalent, from what I can tell)
• Header Ordering (archivers/libarchive)
• Problem: Solaris 9's bzlib.h uses FILE without including stdio.h
• Fix: Added #include <stdio.h> before #include <bzlib.h> in 9 source files
• cwrappers Incompatibility
• Problem: cwrappers passes -P flags that conflict with Sun ld
• Workaround: Bootstrap with --cwrappers=no
• Details: Sun ld treats -P differently than GNU ld; when combined with -dn (static linking), it fails with "option -dn and -P are incompatible"
• I still need to work on tracking this one down unless someone has some ideas

As for the patches:

For lang/nawk

patch-awk.h 
--- awk.h.orig
+++ awk.h
@@ -38,6 +38,17 @@ typedef unsigned char uschar;
 
 #define xfree(a)        { free((void *)(intptr_t)(a)); (a) = NULL; }
 /*
+ * Solaris 9 and earlier declare but don't implement these C99 functions
+ */
+#if defined(__sun) && !defined(HAVE_ISINF)
+#define isinf(x) (!isnan(x) && isnan((x) - (x)))
+#endif
+#if defined(__sun) && !defined(HAVE_SIGNBIT)
+#define signbit(x) ((x) < 0.0 || ((x) == 0.0 && 1.0/(x) < 0.0))
+#endif
+
+/*  * We sometimes cheat writing read-only pointers to NUL-terminate them
  * and then put back the original value
  */

For archivers/libarchive:

--- archive_platform.h.orig     Fri Feb  6 16:45:59 2026
+++ archive_platform.h  Fri Feb  6 16:46:36 2026
@@ -210,4 +210,22 @@
 #define        __LA_FALLTHROUGH
 #endif
 
+/*
+ * Solaris 9 and earlier declare strtoimax/strtoumax in headers
+ * but don't actually implement them in libc. Use strtoll/strtoull
+ * which are equivalent on these platforms.
+ */
+#if defined(__sun) && !defined(HAVE_STRTOIMAX)
+#include <stdlib.h>  /* for strtoll/strtoull */
+static inline intmax_t
+strtoimax(const char *nptr, char **endptr, int base)
+{
+    return strtoll(nptr, endptr, base);
+}
+static inline uintmax_t
+strtoumax(const char *nptr, char **endptr, int base)
+{
+    return strtoull(nptr, endptr, base);
+}
+#endif
 #endif /* !ARCHIVE_PLATFORM_H_INCLUDED */

--- archive_read_support_filter_bzip2.c.orig    Fri Feb  6 16:48:32 2026
+++ archive_read_support_filter_bzip2.c Fri Feb  6 16:49:26 2026
@@ -39,6 +39,7 @@
 #include <unistd.h>
 #endif
 #ifdef HAVE_BZLIB_H
+#include <stdio.h>  /* Required before bzlib.h on Solaris */
 #include <bzlib.h>
 #endif

--- archive_read_support_filter_bzip2.c.orig    Fri Feb  6 16:48:32 2026
+++ archive_read_support_filter_bzip2.c Fri Feb  6 16:49:26 2026
@@ -39,6 +39,7 @@
 #include <unistd.h>
 #endif
 #ifdef HAVE_BZLIB_H
+#include <stdio.h>  /* Required before bzlib.h on Solaris */
 #include <bzlib.h>
 #endif

--- archive_read_support_format_7zip.c.orig     Fri Feb  6 16:54:10 2026
+++ archive_read_support_format_7zip.c  Fri Feb  6 16:55:36 2026
@@ -35,6 +35,7 @@
 #include <stdlib.h>
 #endif
 #ifdef HAVE_BZLIB_H
+#include <stdio.h>  /* Required before bzlib.h on Solaris */
 #include <bzlib.h>
 #endif
 #ifdef HAVE_LZMA_H

--- archive_read_support_format_xar.c.orig      Fri Feb  6 16:54:10 2026
+++ archive_read_support_format_xar.c   Fri Feb  6 16:55:52 2026
@@ -42,6 +42,7 @@
 #include <xmllite.h>
 #endif
 #ifdef HAVE_BZLIB_H
+#include <stdio.h>  /* Required before bzlib.h on Solaris */
 #include <bzlib.h>
 #endif
 #if HAVE_LZMA_H

--- archive_read_support_format_zip.c.orig      Fri Feb  6 16:54:10 2026
+++ archive_read_support_format_zip.c   Fri Feb  6 16:56:01 2026
@@ -52,6 +52,7 @@
 #include <zlib.h>
 #endif
 #ifdef HAVE_BZLIB_H
+#include <stdio.h>  /* Required before bzlib.h on Solaris */
 #include <bzlib.h>
 #endif
 #ifdef HAVE_LZMA_H

--- archive_util.c.orig Fri Feb  6 16:54:11 2026
+++ archive_util.c      Fri Feb  6 16:56:07 2026
@@ -62,6 +62,7 @@
 #include <lzma.h>
 #endif
 #ifdef HAVE_BZLIB_H
+#include <stdio.h>  /* Required before bzlib.h on Solaris */
 #include <bzlib.h>
 #endif
 #ifdef HAVE_LZ4_H

+++ archive_version_details.c   Fri Feb  6 16:56:15 2026
@@ -39,6 +39,7 @@
 #include <lzma.h>
 #endif
 #ifdef HAVE_BZLIB_H
+#include <stdio.h>  /* Required before bzlib.h on Solaris */
 #include <bzlib.h>
 #endif
 #ifdef HAVE_LZ4_H
 

--- archive_write_set_format_7zip.c.orig        Fri Feb  6 16:54:11 2026
+++ archive_write_set_format_7zip.c     Fri Feb  6 16:56:30 2026
@@ -35,6 +35,7 @@
 #include <unistd.h>
 #endif
 #ifdef HAVE_BZLIB_H
+#include <stdio.h>  /* Required before bzlib.h on Solaris */
 #include <bzlib.h>
 #endif
 #if HAVE_LZMA_H

--- archive_write_set_format_xar.c.orig Fri Feb  6 16:54:11 2026
+++ archive_write_set_format_xar.c      Fri Feb  6 16:56:36 2026
@@ -44,6 +44,7 @@
 #define XAR_WRITER_HAS_XML
 #endif
 #ifdef HAVE_BZLIB_H
+#include <stdio.h>  /* Required before bzlib.h on Solaris */
 #include <bzlib.h>
 #endif
 #if HAVE_LZMA_H

--- archive_write_set_format_zip.c.orig Fri Feb  6 16:54:12 2026
+++ archive_write_set_format_zip.c      Fri Feb  6 16:56:47 2026
@@ -56,6 +56,7 @@
 #include <lzma.h>
 #endif
 #ifdef HAVE_BZLIB_H
+#include <stdio.h>  /* Required before bzlib.h on Solaris */
 #include <bzlib.h>
 #endif
 #ifdef HAVE_ZSTD_H