Re: Octave's m4/acx_pthread.m4 & OSX

[Ben Abbott]

On Sep 6, 2010, at 7:27 AM, Jarno Rajahalme wrote:

> Octave maintainers,
> 
> Now that the gnulib dirfd issue is solved, the m4/acx_pthread.m4 istributed 
> with Octave represents the only issue preventing compilation of the 
> development branch without local changes to the octave files.
> 
> I don't know what is the policy regarding the m4 file modifications, but when 
> compiling with GCC 4.5 in OSX (10.6), the following change is needed in 
> acx_pthread.m4:
> 
> *** m4/acx_pthread.m4~        Fri Sep  3 17:47:09 2010
> --- m4/acx_pthread.m4 Fri Sep  3 20:19:45 2010
> ***************
> *** 149,154 ****
> --- 149,158 ----
>   
>           acx_pthread_flags="-pthreads pthread -mt -pthread 
> $acx_pthread_flags"
>           ;;
> +  
> +     *-darwin*)
> +     acx_pthread_flags="-pthread"
> +     ;;
>   esac
>   
>   if test x"$acx_pthread_ok" = xno; then
> 
> 
> Without this change the _REENTRANT preprocessor symbol does not get defined, 
> and consequently some of the math functions (e.g. lgamma_r in 
> /usr/include/architecture/i386/math.h) are dropped out, which makes Octave 
> compile fail.
> 
> Other parts of the same file already contain some darwin dependencies.
> 
> Ben Abbott wrote earlier:
> 
> "The change to acx_pthread.m4 is from Thomas Triechl and resolves the 
> _REENTRANT error on MacOS X."
> 
> Is it possible to get this change into the octave distribution of 
> acx_pthread.m4, so that this bug would not reappear with every new version of 
> Octave?
> 
> With regards,
> 
>   Jarno Rajahalme

I understand the patch is needed for MacOS 10.6, but what of the early versions?

Thomas / anyone else, can you comment. Is the patch needed for ealier versions 
of MacOS?

Also does anyone understand how the ACX_PTHREAD macro can be modified to detect 
the need for the -pthread option?

For the details for why the patch is needed on MacOS 10.6, see the link below.

        
https://www-old.cae.wisc.edu/pipermail/bug-octave/2010-January/010241.html

Ben