[ruby-core:39151] AIX link & test

Hi,

I can manage to get through these problems so I'm not asking for help but more or less making a suggestion.

I believe you are going to need to link the main ruby executable twice.  Once to use it to create the DOC files as well as for testing with the path to libruby.so in the build directory.

Then in the install phase, you will need to link ruby a second time with the path that libruby.so should have when installed.

The current process is to not put "." in the internal libpath (which I understand).  But even if you do put "." in libpath, the build will complete but most of the tests will fail because they change directory away from where the original ruby executable is.

The need to link twice is not uncommon.  libtool knows about this already.  Ruby doesn't use libtool (and I'm not suggesting to change to it).  But my point is only that the need to link twice is not unique to Ruby on AIX.

I'm happy to help with thoughts and suggestions.  I only kinda monitor this group so I may miss your questions.  You are welcome to email me directly.

My current work was with 1.9.2 p290.

To be a little more precise, passing libpath to ld is hard to do because gcc adds in its own paths which the current ruby build process ignores.  Perhaps there is a call to gcc to ask it for the list of library paths and add that to the libpath argument at configuration time.  I have mentioned this before in the distant past.

Once that has been solved, then for the normal make, link ruby with an additional path to the current directory.  This will allow it to find libruby.so.  Then at install time, link it a second time with the additional current directly omitted since it will not be needed once everything is installed.

My own strategy which is serving me well is to add a script called ld which is in my PATH in front of the real ld.  It munges the arguments.  It also relinks and does all sorts of fun stuff.  That project is on github at https://github.com/pedz/aixbin.

Thank you and good luck,
Perry