www.delorie.com/gnu/docs/gmp/gmp_9.html

search

	Buy GNU books!

GNU MP 4.1.2

2.5 Known Build Problems

You might find more up-to-date information at http://swox.com/gmp/.

Compiler link options

The version of libtool currently in use rather aggressively strips compiler options when linking a shared library. This will hopefully be relaxed in the future, but for now if this is a problem the suggestion is to create a little script to hide them, and for instance configure with

./configure CC=gcc-with-my-options

DJGPP

The DJGPP port of bash 2.03 is unable to run the `configure' script, it exits silently, having died writing a preamble to `config.log'. Use bash 2.04 or higher.

`make all' was found to run out of memory during the final `libgmp.la' link on one system tested, despite having 64Mb available. A separate `make libgmp.la' helped, perhaps recursing into the various subdirectories uses up memory.

`DESTDIR' and shared `libgmpxx'

`make install DESTDIR=/my/staging/area', or the same with a `prefix' override, to install to a temporary directory is not fully supported by current versions of libtool when building a shared version of a library which depends on another being built at the same time, like `libgmpxx' and `libgmp'.

The problem is that `libgmpxx' is relinked at the install stage to ensure that if the system puts a hard-coded path to `libgmp' within `libgmpxx' then that path will be correct. Naturally the linker is directed to look only at the final location, not the staging area, so if `libgmp' is not already in that final location then the link will fail.

A workaround for this on SVR4 style systems, such as GNU/Linux, where paths are not hard-coded, is to include the staging area in the linker's search using LD_LIBRARY_PATH. For example with `--prefix=/usr' but installing under `/my/staging/area',

LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/my/staging/area/usr/lib \ make install DESTDIR=/my/staging/area

GNU binutils strip prior to 2.12

strip from GNU binutils 2.11 and earlier should not be used on the static libraries `libgmp.a' and `libmp.a' since it will discard all but the last of multiple archive members with the same name, like the three versions of `init.o' in `libgmp.a'. Binutils 2.12 or higher can be used successfully.

The shared libraries `libgmp.so' and `libmp.so' are not affected by this and any version of strip can be used on them.

make syntax error

On certain versions of SCO OpenServer 5 and IRIX 6.5 the native make is unable to handle the long dependencies list for `libgmp.la'. The symptom is a "syntax error" on the following line of the top-level `Makefile'.

libgmp.la: $(libgmp_la_OBJECTS) $(libgmp_la_DEPENDENCIES)

Either use GNU Make, or as a workaround remove $(libgmp_la_DEPENDENCIES) from that line (which will make the initial build work, but if any recompiling is done `libgmp.la' might not be rebuilt).

MacOS X and GCC

Libtool currently only knows how to create shared libraries on MacOS X using the native cc (which is a modified GCC), not a plain GCC. A static-only build should work though (`--disable-shared').

Also, libtool currently cannot build C++ shared libraries on MacOS X, so if `--enable-cxx' is desired then `--disable-shared' must be used. Hopefully this will be fixed in the future.

NeXT prior to 3.3

The system compiler on old versions of NeXT was a massacred and old GCC, even if it called itself `cc'. This compiler cannot be used to build GMP, you need to get a real GCC, and install that. (NeXT may have fixed this in release 3.3 of their system.)

POWER and PowerPC

Bugs in GCC 2.7.2 (and 2.6.3) mean it can't be used to compile GMP on POWER or PowerPC. If you want to use GCC for these machines, get GCC 2.7.2.1 (or later).

Sequent Symmetry

Use the GNU assembler instead of the system assembler, since the latter has serious bugs.

Solaris 2.6

The system sed prints an error "Output line too long" when libtool builds `libgmp.la'. This doesn't seem to cause any obvious ill effects, but GNU sed is recommended, to avoid any doubt.

Sparc Solaris 2.7 with gcc 2.95.2 in ABI=32

A shared library build of GMP seems to fail in this combination, it builds but then fails the tests, apparently due to some incorrect data relocations within gmp_randinit_lc_2exp_size. The exact cause is unknown, `--disable-shared' is recommended.

Windows DLL test programs

When creating a DLL version of `libgmp', libtool creates wrapper scripts like `t-mul' for programs that would normally be `t-mul.exe', in order to setup the right library paths etc. This works fine, but the absence of `t-mul.exe' etc causes make to think they need recompiling every time, which is an annoyance when re-running a `make check'.