Re: Release news, development news, state of the world

[Graham Percival]

On Mon, Dec 12, 2011 at 07:06:56AM -0700, Colin Campbell wrote:
> FWIW, I've found that GUB on x86-64 Oneiric will choke building
> cross-compiled components, with error messages saying "unable to
> identify extension of x", where x is the x.o form of a tool.   This
> points, according to GCC, to missing or unlocatable libraries: gmp,
> mpfr, or mpc.

libmpfr-dev needs to be installed on your main OS; GUB will not
build that itself.  I think you already knew that, but I'm adding
that advice here in case somebody else tries to solve this and
runs into the problem.

That dependency is noted in the README, but it's not particularly
easy to find.

> The first two seem to be part of the GUB  build, the
> last is not.  I've asked Jan Niewenhuizen for advice, but not had a
> reply.  I'm also building a 32-bit VM to see whether bitness is part
> of the issue.

I have a vague recollection of trying a 32-bit build and not
seeing any difference, but I wouldn't swear to it.  As for Jan,
how long as did you ask him?  I don't think that we can / should
rely on responses from any one particular person, especially if
it's been more than a few weeks.

It would be great if other people tried out GUB themselves --
maybe a it'll work just fine on Redhat (which could help debug the
problem we see on ubuntu), or maybe it won't but a fresh pair of
eyes could see something that was missed.

> Most of these errors, IIRC, are in the darwin/ area, which may imply
> a connection to issue 1948.

There's no connection between that and 1993, 1943, or 1948.

Cheers,
- Graham