README.aix - Instaling bigloo on an AIX system.

 Initial date of writing   : January 14, 2004, by Manuel Serrano
 Last date of modification : January 14, 2004, by Hans Oesterholt-Dijkema

This readme is in Plain Old Documentation (POD) format. It can be processed by Perl's pod2html, or by Hans Oesterholt's spod2html (which at the moment of writing has not yet entered the public domain). To convert the document using spod2html use 'spod2html --comment README.aix'. It will generate README.aix.html.

In this readme I will supply a recipe to compile bigloo on AIX 4.3.3, using the native cc compiler.

I used Hans Boehm's GC version 6.2 on AIX. I did following to get it working:

 ./configure --prefix=$HOME/local CC=cc_r \
       CFLAGS="-qinfo=pro -qinfo=use -bdynamic -brtl" \
       --cache-file=/dev/null --srcdir=.
 make
 make check
 make install
 cp -R include/private $HOME/local/include/gc
 cp .libs/libgc.exp $HOME/local/lib

You need to alter the configure script of bigloo to configure the external GC. I did it as follows:

 #*--- gc source directory (left blank for default configuration) ------*/
 customgc=no
 # the following two variables are relevant only when using 
 # standard (i.e. already existing and operational) Boehm's GC
 # and when customgc=no
 stdgclib=gc
 stdgcdir=$HOME/local/include/gc

There are assemblers (like gnu as) that are able to C Pre Process a file. Not so with the AIX as (after all, IBM products are never easy). It turns out that a preprocessing assembler can easily be faked by the following script:

 #!/bin/sh

 INARGS=$*
 ASFILE=""
 ARGS=""

 for i in $INARGS
 do
         AS=`echo $i | grep -i "\.s$"`
         if [ "$AS" != "" ]; then
                 ASFILE="$AS"
                 ARGS="$ARGS /tmp/tmp.s"
         else
                 ARGS="$ARGS $i"
         fi
 done

 cc -E $ASFILE | grep -v "^#line" >/tmp/tmp.s
 as $ARGS

I called the script basm (bigloo asm). autoconf/ascpp is trying to run $PWD/../bin/basm in the 2.6c-alpha package.

AIX needs special linking for shared objects and libraries. Normally, the "-bnoentry -bexpall -bM:SRE" options would do, but bigloo uses some functions and variables with leading underscores. These won't be exported by using the -bexpall option. As suggested by Hans Oesterholt, an easy way to solve the problem is to use the folowing Perl script for linker:

 #!/usr/bin/perl

 my @ARGS=();

 while (my $arg=shift @ARGV) {
         push @ARGS,$arg;
         if ($arg eq "-o") {
                 $shlib=shift @ARGV;
                 push @ARGS,$shlib;
         }
 }

 my $lib=$shlib;
 $lib=~s/\.so$/.a/;
 my $exp=$shlib;
 $exp=~s/\.so$/.exp/;

 if (-e $lib) {
         open IN,"nm $lib |";
         open OUT,">$exp";
         while (<IN>) {
                 my $name=isexp($_);
                 if ($name ne "") {
                         print OUT "$name\n";
                 }
         }
         close OUT;
         close IN;
         $linkopt="-bE:$exp";
 }
 else {
         $linkopt="-bexpall";
         print "WARNING(aixld.pl)! No $lib exists, note: -bexpall does not export symbols with leading '_'\n";
 }

 system("cc_r",@ARGS,$linkopt);

 sub isexp {
         my $line=shift;
         my ($name,$type,$rest)=split /\s+/,$line;

         $name="", if ($type eq "u");
         $name="", if ($type eq "U");
         $name="", if ($type eq "d");   
         $name="", if ($type eq "f");
         $name="", if ($type eq "t");
         $name="", if ($type eq "T");
         $name="", if ($type eq "b");
         $name="", if ($type eq "a");
         $name="", if ($type eq "");
 return $name;
 }

Though not efficient, it is sufficient. This script hopes to find a static library at the place, the shared libraries is being made. The static library notably has all symbols in it. This script does an nm on the static library (which should already exist) and then exports all global text/data symbols in it. I called the script aixshld.pl and put it in $HOME/bin. NB. It will utterly fail when making a shared object/library with symbols with leading underscores in it, if no static library (archive) of it exists. So this script does fit in the making process of bigloo but cannot be used for general shared linking.

It could be an idea to enhance the script to examine all object files supplied to the linker, instead of an assumed static library.

With the basm script in $BIGLOODIR/../bin, and aixshld.pl in $HOME/bin bigloo could be configured as follows:

 ./configure --prefix=$HOME/C<bigloo> --native=yes --jvm=no --dotnet=no --customgc=no \
        --cc=cc_r --ld="$HOME/bin/aixshld.pl -L$HOME/local/lib -lgc" \
        --cflags="-qcpluscmt -I$HOME/local/include -L$HOME/local/lib" \
        --coflags="-qmaxmem=16384 -O -I$HOME/local/include -L$HOME/local/lib" \
        --sharedbde=yes --as=$PWD/tools/basm

Please note the -qcpluscmt option. Some files use C++ '//' comments. Of course the IBM cc compiler won't accept '//' by default. Also note the -qmaxmem=16384 option. The cc optimizer uses a maximum of 2048KB memory per default. This won't be enough for the optimizer.

I didn't try any other options. The bigloo debugger will probably not work, as AIX works with the dbx debugger, not gdb. I didn't try bee.

To make bigloo, after configuring it, just type:

 make
 make test
 make install

On my AIX machine, only one test failed: the process(kill) test. I had to comment out the process(kill) test. After that all tests passed. I don't know what is the problem with process(kill). Somehow the killed process stays in the process table? I never experienced problems with kill on AIX using C or Perl.

Manuel Serrano <Manuel.Serrano@sophia.inria.fr>, Hans Oesterholt-Dijkema <hdnews@gawab.com>