ECL in Sage will not build on Fedora 14, which will be released on 2nd November 2010

[sagetrac-drkirkby]

As noted on #9264, the ECL version currently in Sage will not build on the Fedora 14 Linux distribution, which will be released very soon. Although Sage currently only supports Fedora 13 (see http://wiki.sagemath.org/SupportedPlatforms), it would be sensible if we could permit Fedora 14 to be used with Sage.

Apparently the error message when building ECL is:

libeclmin.a(sequence.o): In function `cl_sublis':
/home/vbraun/Code/ecl/src/c/sequence.d:106: multiple definition of `cl_sublis'
libeclmin.a(list.o):/home/vbraun/Code/ecl/src/c/list.d:778: first defined here
c/all_symbols.o:(.data.rel+0x9b20): undefined reference to `cl_subseq'
libeclmin.a(string.o): In function `string_trim0':
/home/vbraun/Code/ecl/src/c/string.d:756: undefined reference to `cl_subseq'
libeclmin.a(sequence.o): In function `cl_copy_seq':
tmp.c:(.text+0x4c0): undefined reference to `cl_subseq'
libeclmin.a(pathname.o): In function `make_one':
/home/vbraun/Code/ecl/src/c/pathname.d:234: undefined reference to `cl_subseq'
/home/vbraun/Code/ecl/src/c/pathname.d:234: undefined reference to `cl_subseq'
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
make[1]: *** [ecl_min] Error 1

I would suggest those that have Fedora 14, should

• Try the latest ECL stable release, which I'm advised does build
• Try the latest ECL snapshot, in the even the latest stable release does not build.

One issue in the past has been that updates to ECL have caused problems with Maxima, and updating Maxima has sometimes required changes to the ECL version. There have been several instances where using the latest ECL and the latest Maxima did not give a workable solution.

This might be a non-trivial issue to resolve.

I will leave others to sort this out, as I don't run Fedora myself.

I find it amazing how bad the backward compatibility of Linux distributions are. I can take an application written 15 years ago for Solaris and know with 99.9% certainty the binary will run unmodified on the latest Solaris.

Dave

Upstream: Fixed upstream, in a later stable release.

CC: @vbraun @jaapspies @jasongrout

Component: algebra

Reviewer: David Kirkby

Issue created by migration from https://trac.sagemath.org/ticket/10185

[sagetrac-drkirkby]

Changed upstream from None of the above - read trac for reasoning. to Fixed upstream, in a later stable release.

[vbraun]

comment:2

ecl 10.4.1 compiles fine on Fedora 14, so the bug seems to be fixed. However, updating ecl requires us to update maxima, too.

I've created the bug #10187: Update ecl and maxima

with updated spgks.

This is not really a binary compatibility issue, I think the linker just got better at detecting broken object files. And doubtful code is supposed to break in Fedora so it gets fixed for RHEL releases :-)

[sagetrac-drkirkby]

comment:3

An updated ECL can be found at

http://boxen.math.washington.edu/home/kirkby/patches/ecl-10.4.1.spkg

which preserves the full repository information.

As you say, you need to update Maxima too, and apply some patches.

See #10187

[jdemeyer]

Reviewer: David Kirkby