xargs dysfunctional after moving to a new machine

[Bruno Haible]

Hi,

I built and installed findutils-4.2.32 on a Linux/x86 machine. Now I moved the
binaries to a Linux/x86_64 machine (with libraries for execution of 32-bit mode
binaries). The xargs program now does not work any more:

$ echo x | xargs echo
xargs: xargs.c:443: main: Assertion `bc_ctl.arg_max <= (131072-2048)' failed.
bash: echo: write error: Broken pipe
Aborted
$ xargs --help
xargs: xargs.c:443: main: Assertion `bc_ctl.arg_max <= (131072-2048)' failed.
Aborted

The assertion that fails is:

#if defined(ARG_MAX)
      assert(bc_ctl.arg_max <= (ARG_MAX-2048));
#endif

Apparently, ARG_MAX was 131072 on the first machine, and bc_ctl.arg_max is
2097152:

$ getconf ARG_MAX
2097152

This was apparently fixed in findutils-4.3.5 (2007-05-05) (#19391). But why
is it still present in findutils-4.2.32 (2008-01-25)?

Bruno