Re: trying to solve some missing symbols during linking (porting to Plan9)

[Jeffrey Walton]

On Thu, Oct 10, 2024 at 9:51 AM G. Branden Robinson
<g.branden.robinson@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> At 2024-10-10T11:38:05+0200, Jens Staal wrote:
> > Dear all,
> >
> > I am currently trying to compile Bash on Plan9 (9front) using APExp (a
> > GNU/posix compatibility environment). I have all the bash object files
> > and libraries compiled and I only get one weird issue during linking:
> >
> > chdir: BC: not defined
> > chdir: PC: not defined
> > chdir: UP: not defined
>
> These are termcap library symbols.  If you have ncurses installed, the
> command "man BC" brings up their documentation.
>
> Bash's source distribution ships with a copy of GNU termcap (which
> hasn't been maintained in many years, as far as I know), but as I
> understand Bash's build process, it isn't used unless a termcap library
> cannot be found on the system.  You may need to consult the output of
> "./configure".

I may be mistaken, but I believe Thomas Dickey's Ncurses package
provides something compatible for the old termcap, but I think you
need to enable it at configure time.

It's been a long time since I had to putz around with Ncurses and
Termcap, so I am probably missing a fair amount of relevant info about
it.

> > grepping the libraries shows that chdir is in libbuiltins.a and that
> > should correspond to builtins/cd.def
> >
> > When I look in that file I do not see any references to BC, PC or UP
> > and I can not find anything obvious that would pull in those?
>
> These symbols correspond to pretty low-level aspects of termcap's
> interface relating to the terminal driver.  My guess would be that your
> build is halting early, and not attempting to link a lot of other things
> that would fail with the same problem.

Jeff