re-add (disabled) air crash disaster

[micropolis] / src / tcl / porting.txt

This file contains a collection of notes that various people have
provided about porting Tcl to various machines and operating systems.
I don't have personal access to any of these machines, so I make
no guarantees that the notes are correct, complete, or up-to-date.
In some cases, a person has volunteered to act as a contact point
for questions about porting Tcl to a particular machine;  in these
cases the person's name and e-mail address are listed.

---------------------------------------------
Cray machines running UNICOS:
Contact: John Freeman (jlf@cray.com)
---------------------------------------------

1. The nm command on unicos doesn't have a -p option, so I removed it
from the config script without apparent harm.

diff -c -r1.1 config
*** 1.1	1991/11/12 15:11:51
--- config	1991/11/12 15:14:18
***************
*** 57,63 ****
      echo "  to set the libc variable."
      exit(1)
  endif
! nm -p $libc > tmp.libc
  if ( $status != 0 ) then
      echo "- ERROR\!\!  Nm failed to extract names of system-supplied library"
      echo "  procedures from $libc.  You'll have to modify config by hand to"
--- 57,63 ----
      echo "  to set the libc variable."
      exit(1)
  endif
! nm $libc > tmp.libc
  if ( $status != 0 ) then
      echo "- ERROR\!\!  Nm failed to extract names of system-supplied library"
      echo "  procedures from $libc.  You'll have to modify config by hand to"

2. There is an error in the strstr function in UNICOS such that if the
string to be searched is empty (""), the search will continue past the
end of the string.  Because of this, the history substitution loop
will sometimes run past the end of its target string and trash
malloc's free list, resulting in a core dump some time later.  (As you
can probably guess, this took a while to diagnose.)  I've submitted a
problem report to the C library maintainers, but in the meantime here
is a workaround.

-----------------------------------------------------------------
diff -c1 -r1.1 tclHistory.c
*** 1.1	1991/11/12 16:01:58
--- tclHistory.c	1991/11/12 16:14:22
***************
*** 23,24 ****
--- 23,29 ----
  #include "tclInt.h"
+ 
+ #ifdef _CRAY
+ /* There is a bug in strstr in UNICOS; this works around it. */
+ #define strstr(s1,s2) ((s1)?(*(s1)?strstr((s1),(s2)):0):0)
+ #endif _CRAY


---------------------------------------------
HP-UX systems:
---------------------------------------------

1. The #define for TCL_UNION_WAIT in tclUnix.h needs to be set to 0,
not 1.  I've tried a number of techniques to get the "config" script
to figure this out and set it correctly, but so far I haven't been
able to make it work for HP-UX systems.

2. It may also be useful to add the flag "-D_BSD" to CFLAGS in the
Makefile, but I'm not sure this is necessary (and it may even be
evil) if TCL_UNION_WAIT has been #define'd correctly.

---------------------------------------------
MIPS systems runing EP/IX:
---------------------------------------------

1. Need to add a line "#include <bsd/sys/time.h>" in tclUnix.h.

2. Need to add "-lbsd" into the line that makes tclTest:

	${CC} ${CFLAGS} tclTest.o libtcl.a -lbsd -o tclTest

---------------------------------------------
IBM RS/6000 systems running AIX:
---------------------------------------------

1. The system version of strtoul is buggy, at least under some
versions of AIX.  If the expression tests fail, try forcing Tcl
to use its own version of strtoul instead of the system version.
To do this, first copy strtoul.c from the compat subdirectory up
to the main Tcl directory.  Then modify the Makefile so that
the definition for COMPAT_OBJS includes "strtoul.o".  Note:  the
"config" script should now detect the buggy strtoul and substitute
Tcl's version automatically.

2. You may have to comment out the declaration of open in tclUnix.h.

3. The "nm -p ..." line in the file "config" has to be changed to
"nm -en ..." if you use the version of nm that's in /bin.  If you're
set up to use the BSD version (in /usr/ucb) then this won't be a
problem.

---------------------------------------------
AT&T 4.03 OS:
---------------------------------------------

Machine: i386/33Mhz i387 32k Cache 16MByte 
OS: AT&T SYSV Release 4 Version 3
X: X11R5 fixlevel 9
Xserver: X386 1.2

1. Change the Tk Makefile as follows:
XLIB            = -lX11
	should be changed to:
XLIB            = -lX11 -lsocket -lnsl

2. Change the Tcl "config" script as follows:
set libc="/lib/libc.a"
	should be changed to:
set libc="/usr/ccs/lib/libc.a"

-------------------------------------------------------
Motorola MPC's running UNIX System V/88 Release R32V2:
-------------------------------------------------------

1.  Tcl should build without any modifications to sources, but csh
isn't supplied with the operating system so you'll have to find and
use the public-domain tcsh.

-------------------------------------------------------
SGI machines running Irix release 4.0.1 or earlier:
-------------------------------------------------------

1. There's a bug in the optimizer;  compile tclVar.c using -O0.

2. In tclUnix.h, add the following just before the declaration of environ:

#ifdef __sgi
#define environ _environ
#endif

---------------------------------------------
NeXT machines running NeXTStep 2.1:
---------------------------------------------

1. Change the "libc" definition in the config file to
    set libc="/lib/libsys_s.a"

2. Several of the "format" and "scan" tests will fail, but these are
all minor nits stemming from imperfect POSIX compliance in the NeXT
C library procedures.  The errors are unlikely to affect any Tcl
applications.