Re: MXE Octave: "... has no symbols" warning under Mac OS X

[John W. Eaton]

On 08/27/2013 07:58 AM, Ben Abbott wrote:
> On Aug 27, 2013, at 4:26 AM, Anirudha Bose wrote:
>
> > I have been working on reusing mxe-octave [1] to natively build Octave for Mac 
> > OS X. I have been able to complete the build process for the target 
> > i686-apple-darwin11, but the executable usr/bin/octave doesn't launch Octave. 
> > Here is the error I see.
> >
> > dyld: Library not loaded: libcholmod.so
> >    Referenced from: /Users/mac6-user1/./mxe-octave/usr/bin/octave
> >    Reason: image not found
> > Trace/BPT trap: 5
> >
> > I tried to trace back the error and saw that the library libcholmod.so belongs 
> > to the package suitesparse. The following is a part of the log of suitesparse,  
> > which I think is responsible for the above error.
> >
> > ar rv  libcholmod.a cholmod_aat.o cholmod_add.o cholmod_band.o 
> > cholmod_change_factor.o cholmod_common.o cholmod_complex.o cholmod_copy.o 
> > cholmod_dens$
> > ar: creating archive libcholmod.a
> > /opt/local/bin/ranlib: file: libcholmod.a(cholmod_ccolamd.o) has no symbols
> > /opt/local/bin/ranlib: file: libcholmod.a(cholmod_csymamd.o) has no symbols
> > /opt/local/bin/ranlib: file: libcholmod.a(cholmod_metis.o) has no symbols
> > /opt/local/bin/ranlib: file: libcholmod.a(cholmod_nesdis.o) has no symbols
> > /opt/local/bin/ranlib: file: libcholmod.a(cholmod_camd.o) has no symbols
> > /opt/local/bin/ranlib: file: libcholmod.a(cholmod_l_ccolamd.o) has no symbols
> > /opt/local/bin/ranlib: file: libcholmod.a(cholmod_l_csymamd.o) has no symbols
> > /opt/local/bin/ranlib: file: libcholmod.a(cholmod_l_metis.o) has no symbols
> > /opt/local/bin/ranlib: file: libcholmod.a(cholmod_l_nesdis.o) has no symbols
> > /opt/local/bin/ranlib: file: libcholmod.a(cholmod_l_camd.o) has no symbols
> >
> >
> > I suppose the problem is because Mac OS "ar" is not standard. I have also 
> > noticed these warnings with other packages too. Can anyone tell me how to get a proper 
> > build under Mac OS X?
> >
> > [1] http://hg.octave.org/mxe-octave
> >
> > - Anirudha
>
> MacOSX's toolchain avoids the use of static libraries (I assume to avoid 
> violating GNU licenses).  That is likely at the root of the problem.
>
> In any event, I expect that both Fink and Macports include an "ar" with their 
> basic installation.

You can't avoid your obligations under the terms of the GPL simply by 
using a dynamically linked library.

It looks to me like the suitesparse build is not doing the right thing 
to create shared libraries.

Anirudha, part of your project is to figure out why these things are not 
working and fix them, not just to ask us to tell you step by step what 
to do to fix the problems.

I'd take a look at what the debian and fink packages do to build shared 
versions of suitesparse and then try to apply the same methods to the 
mxe-octave build system.

jwe