[Bug-ddrescue] Re: ddrescue-0.9: build comments

[Antonio Diaz Diaz]

Hello again, Nelson. Thanks for your interest in GNU ddrescue.

Nelson H. F. Beebe wrote:
> I ran build attempts for ddrescue-0.9 this morning in 24 compilation
> environment on about 20 flavors of Unix.
> While ddrescue built on several GNU/Linux platforms, builds failed
> everywhere else.

As I said before (several times), I only have access to GNU/Linux, and I 
won't volunteer my time to support other platforms. Please, ask the 
vendors of the other "flavors of Unix" to volunteer their time to adapt 
GNU ddrescue to their platforms so you can use it. What? They wont work 
for you gratis? How ungrateful they are!


> One problem that needs repair is that the Makefile has g++ hardcoded.
> GNU autoconf conventions are that CC, CXX, CFLAGS, CXXFLAGS, LIBS, and
> LDFLAGS should all be settable in the environment, and propagate into
> the Makefile.

First, GNU ddrescue does not use autoconf, so its conventions are not 
applicable.
Second, RTFM. The documented method to override makefile variables is:
    make CXX=your_compiler_name ...


> Compilers reported these problems; they are typical of reports on many
> systems, so I'm showing only this subset.
>
>         g++  -Wall -W -O2 -c -o ddrescue.o ddrescue.cc
>         ddrescue.cc: In member function `bool Block::join(const Block&)':
>         ddrescue.cc:94: warning: comparison between signed and unsigned integer
>            expressions

>         ddrescue.cc: In function `void show_status(long int, long int, long 
> int, long
>            int, long unsigned int, const char*, bool)':
>         ddrescue.cc:260: warning: unsigned int format, different type arg (arg 
> 3)

These seem problems with the definition of size_t in your system. 
Please, send me the preprocessed source file and test the next 
development release of GNU ddrescue when announced at Freshmeat.

I never release a new version of any program with even a single warning, 
and I am specially careful with GNU ddrescue because it is a data rescue 
tool. But I need help from the users to fix problems on systems 
different from my own.


>         g++  -Wall -W -O2 -c -o ddrescue.o ddrescue.cc
>         ddrescue.cc:34: getopt.h: No such file or directory
>
> getopt is NOT a standard C utility; if you use it, you MUST provide
> your own code.

Sorry, I think your Unix vendor MUST provide you a copy of getopt.h.


>         g++  -Wall -W -O2 -c -o ddrescue.o ddrescue.cc
>         ddrescue.cc: In function `long long int getnum(const char*, size_t, 
> long long int, long long int)':
>         ddrescue.cc:160: error: `strtoll' is not a member of `std'
>         ddrescue.cc:193: error: `llabs' is not a member of `std'
>
> These failures reflect a namespace problem.  Few C++ compilers are at
> the level of the 1998 ISO C++ Standard (never mind that there is now a
> 2003 ISO C++ Standard, sigh...), so suitable configure tests need to
> be made to figure out what needs to be done in older C++ environments.

I won't volunteer my time to support old environments. Please, upgrade.


Regards,
Antonio Diaz.