Re: long term broken packages

[Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost>]

Taylor R Campbell <campbell+netbsd-tech-pkg%mumble.net@localhost> writes:

>> From: Greg Troxel <gdt%lexort.com@localhost>
>> 
>> Sure, but it's a clear bug for an upstream Makefile to expect RANLIB to
>> be defined in the environment, without this being documented in INSTALL,
>> and to fail to try 'ranlib'.
>
> This happened with the update from ocaml-4.14.0 to ocaml-4.14.1, with
> the following release note:
>
>     - #11184, #11670: Stop calling ranlib on created / installed libraries
>       (Sébastien Hinderer and Xavier Leroy, review by the same)
>
> The upstream OCaml patch #11184 includes the following change:
>
> diff --git a/Makefile.config.in b/Makefile.config.in
> index fabec894ae8d..8c1f4aeab35f 100644
> --- a/Makefile.config.in
> +++ b/Makefile.config.in
> @@ -88,10 +88,6 @@ LDFLAGS?=@LDFLAGS@
>  ### How to invoke the C preprocessor through the C compiler
>  CPP=@CPP@
>  
> -### How to invoke ranlib
> -RANLIB=@RANLIB@
> -RANLIBCMD=@RANLIBCMD@
> -
>  ### How to invoke ar
>  ARCMD=@AR@
>
> https://github.com/ocaml/ocaml/pull/11184

Interesting - that explains how we got here.

> So it's not exactly our bug -- it arose from an upstream change in
> lang/ocaml and x11/labltk presumably hasn't been updated to handle it.
> Seems reasonable to work around this by setting RANLIB=${RANLIB:Q} in
> MAKE_ENV (or INSTALL_ENV).

Indeed - I did not mean to suggest this was a pkgsrc bug, but that
labltk was buggy.

labltk has

  # Arguably ranlib should be a TOOL, and labltk should search for it.
  INSTALL_ENV+=           RANLIB=${RANLIB:Q}

and I think things are as good as it gets, given the upstream world.