Re: Please help test libffi 3.0.11-rc3

[Anthony Green <green at moxielogic dot com>]

On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 4:06 PM, P. Martin <mrsmiley98@lycos.com> wrote:
> On Apr 6, 2012, Anthony Green <green@moxielogic.com> wrote:
>>
>> I've uploaded release candidate 3 for testing here:
>> ? ftp://sourceware.org/pub/libffi/libffi-3.0.11-rc3.tar.gz
>>
>> Please test it on whatever systems you have at your disposal, and
>> update the testing wiki here:
>> ? http://www.moxielogic.org/wiki/index.php/Libffi_3.0.11
>
>
> All tests pass on OSX Lion 10.7.3 using XCode-4.3.2 when I build
> the software with clang or llvm-gcc with one major caveat. ?I had
> to runtest with gcc-4.6.
>
> It passes all when I build with clang-3.1.318 and test with gcc-4.6.
> It passes all when I build with llvm-gcc-4.2.1 (llvm 2336.9) and
> test with gcc-4.6.
>
> It still fails if I runtest with clang or llvm-gcc. ?So why does that happen?
> If it can build all the libraries at -Os using only those compilers,
> why can't the tests pass using those compilers? ?Why am I forced
> to install gcc-4.6? ?OSX doesn't come with gcc anymore, and building
> that to make your testsuite work was not fun. ?But I did it because
> I'm not going leave this as a mess on my part. ? OSX uses
> DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH, not LD_LIBRARY_PATH, but as I mentioned
> I am not a programmer. ?So I have no idea what to look for. ?In a
> previous message you said my compilers have optimization problems.
> If that was the case, why did the test at -O0 fail? ?I'm sure you'll
> just ignore this anyway, but I did my part.

Well, I appreciate the effort you put into this.

What you're describing does perhaps suggest ABI compatibility problems
between GCC/libffi and the native LLVM based system compilers.  This
does happen now and then.  For instance, a new Windows ABI option was
added in libffi to improve compatibility with Microsoft's compiler,
and many years ago we had issues on Irix with SGI's system compiler.

I've never been an Apple user, so I have to rely on volunteers to help
test and debug problems on that platform.  Unfortunately I think we're
pretty much stuck unless somebody steps forward (or sends me a nice
fast modern mac -- hey, it could happen! :)

Thanks,

AG