[ruby-talk:14707] Ruby on AIX?

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Hi,

It has been a LONG time since I've done any C programming, and I'm looking 
for some help.  I've just joined the list, am new to Ruby, and I've searched 
the archives for this issue.

Up front: I'm looking for help compiling Ruby on AIX, or someone who has a 
binary they'd be willing to package up and send me.  Read on for details, if 
you're interested.

I'm a contractor for the US Forest Service, doing applications development.  
We're using Java, mostly, but there are many legacy apps which are basically 
hundreds of Korn shell scripts.  Every once in a while there is a need to 
convert one of the shell scripts to something else for speed improvements, 
and there is one large application which (IMO) should be entirely re-written 
in something else.  I'd like to use Ruby.

<success_story>
Anyway, I was tasked with one of these conversions, which I would normally do 
in Java, despite the fact that neither Java nor C is particularly suited to 
text processing of this sort.  I'd been playing with Ruby for a couple of 
weeks, so I thought I'd do the refactoring in Ruby.

At first, I was really, really pleased.  I did the work on my Linux box; it 
took me about a day to do the conversion (without test data!), and exactly 
five test runs to work out the bugs and output formatting errors.  The 
resulting script was smaller, and 90% faster than the original script.
</success_story>

<problems>
So I tried to compile Ruby on the AIX box, and got all the way through with 
no errors to the miniruby link:

	ld: 0711-317 ERROR: Undefined symbol: .ISDIGIT

I installed GCC and tried again, with exactly the same results.  I tried 
configuring with a static build, but got the same problem.  I *know* that the 
ISDIGIT macro is defined in the regex source, and I know that code is being 
built and included.

My only other option at this point is to install a cross-compiler on my Linux 
box, which I'll admit I'm not looking forward to.
</problems>

'uname -a' on the AIX box returns:
AIX sv3 3 4 005118144C00
The box is an IBM RS/6000 machine (powerpc-ibm-aix4.3.2.0)
I'm trying to build Ruby 1.6.3
I have access to both cc (C for AIX Compiler, Version 5) and to gcc (2.95.3 
20010315).

If this all works out, Ruby could get used for most of the work internal to 
the Forest Service.  I'll eventually need to build up Ruby as an RTE for 
redistribution.  At this point, I'd most like to know what I need to do to 
fix the compilation.  Failing that, I'd appreciate a binary tarball.

Can anyone help me?

Thanks, in advance.

Sean

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