Re: linking/compile error

[Heinz-Jürgen Oertel]

Hallo Branden,

thanks for trying to help.

Am Mittwoch, 7. Dezember 2022, 16:00:41 CET schrieb G. Branden Robinson:
> Hello Heinz,
> 
> At 2022-12-06T17:38:02+0100, Heinz-Jürgen Oertel wrote:
> > after at least on year I  was in the need to compile and install groff
> > on Tumbleweed.
> 
> That's openSUSE, for folks like me who didn't already know.
> 
> > I got:
> > CXXLD    grodvi
> > /usr/bin/ld: libgroff.a(libgroff_a-getopt.o): relocation R_X86_64_32
> > against `.rodata.str1.1' can not be used when making a PIE object;
> > recompile with -fPIE
> 
> This is a linker error[1] and suggests to me that the toolchain on your
> system is misconfigured (or you have stale object files lying around,
> but as you said below, you cleaned).  It might also be the case that you
> have a stray CFLAGS variable in your environment that is passing
> inappropriate options to the build.
> 
> A brute force approach would be to './configure' and/or 'make' with
> 'CFLAGS=-fPIE' and see if that fixes it, but I think there might be a
> cleaner solution...
> 
> > The same error after a "git pull"  and "make clean" with current
> > sources
> 
> When building groff from a Git checkout, you should use "make distclean"
> instead of a regular "make clean".
> 
> Our INSTALL.extra file mentions this.
> 
>   5. You can remove the groff executables and other generated files from
>      the source code directory by typing 'make clean'.  To also remove
>      the files that 'configure' created (so you can compile groff for a
>      different kind of computer or with different options to
>      'configure'), type 'make distclean'.
> 
> You mentioned that it had been a year since you built groff.  It occurs
> to me now that "make distclean" might also be good advice if the
> toolchain on the system has changed, since theoretically defaults
> regarding position-independent code (PIC) and position-independent
> executables (PIE) might have changed.  You can likely rely on Autoconf
> to detect and adapt to such changes, but "make clean" does not erase
> what the "configure" script produces--and that script is what runs all
> the Autoconf checks.
> 
> I'm not certain, but my guess is that any sort of ABI break could cause
> problems like this, and some years ago, C++ on Linux was notorious for a
> series of ABI breaks.  So much so that a crust of thick-walled
> conservatism has formed over current practice, less due to sagacious
> wisdom from experts than terror of disrupting a fragile status quo.[2]
> 
> Anyway, "make distclean", re-"./configure", and try again.

Does not work.



> Alternatively, for your convenience I'm attaching the script I've been
> using for years to do clean builds _all the time_.  It's called
> "make-groff-fast" because I have another that runs "make distcheck",
> which more than doubles the build time, and probably only a groff
> maintainer would care to test a build from a distribution archive.[3]

asks for libtoolize, is called libtool on my system
Did a make distclean, than
./make-groff-fast   
but anyway, this also doesn't work

ended up with adding -fPIE to
CFLAGS = -g -O2 -fPIE
and
CXXFLAGS = -g -O2 -fPIE

and now have 
GNU troff (groff) version 1.23.0.rc1.3490-ed8c

Grüße
   Heinz