Re: AIX tests failures

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hi Jim,

* Jim Meyering wrote on Sun, May 28, 2006 at 03:48:21PM CEST:
> Ralf Wildenhues <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> > With coreutils 5.96, I get three failures on AIX 4.3.3, namely:
> > cp/fail-perm, rm/inaccessible, help-version.

> > $ env VERBOSE=yes TESTS=help-version make check-TESTS
> > [...]
> > + 0< in-2578 1> out-2578
> > ../../src/dircolors: <internal>:54: unrecognized keyword 
> > OTHER_WRITABLERITABLE
> > + echo FAIL: dircolors
> > FAIL: dircolors
> 
> Odd, indeed.
> Does the generated file, dircolors.h, look alright?

Well, it was still the one shipped with the 5.96 tarball.
If I remove coreutils-5.96/src/dircolors.h, then the regenerated one in
the build tree has white-space difference from the removed one.  A
`dircolors' program rebuilt with that headers gives the same error.

> If yours looks the same, then that failure may be due to compiler
> limitations.  The string defined in that file is pretty long.
> Which compiler are you using?

/usr/vac/bin/cc aka "C for AIX Compiler, Version 6".  But I don't think
this is the source for the error.  Tried rebuilding it with gcc-3.4.3
(in the same build tree, yes I know this is unreliable), and get the
same error...

(time passes)

... AIX strndup is severely broken, at least on 4.3.3 and 5.1, similar
to its strnlen; see also[1].  See for example this test:

$ cat >a.c <<\EOF
#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>

extern char *strndup (const char *, size_t);
int main()
{
  char *s = strndup ("STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLEx", 21);
  printf ("%s.\n", s);
  free (s);
  printf ("%s.\n", strndup("OTHER_WRITABLE 3", 14));
}
EOF
$ cc -o a a.c && ./a
STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE.
OTHER_WRITABLERITABLE.

And yes, that happens with GCC as well.  They simply forget the final
`\0', I guess.  As also mentioned here[2], the strndup declaration is
#ifdef'ed away behind a _LINUX_SOURCE_COMPAT define.

I guess Autoconf should have a AC_FUNC_STRNLEN analogous to
AC_FUNC_STRNLEN, and the Gnulib strnlen modules should use that.
I don't know whether other buggy strn* functions exist on AIX.

cut.c, dircolors.c, expand.c, and unexpand.c also use strndup.

Cheers,
Ralf

[1] https://bugzilla.samba.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1097
[2] http://mailman.webdav.org/pipermail/cadaver/2004-April/000759.html