[erlang-questions] Notes/Findings on building R12B-1 on AIX 5.3

[Mark Geib]

I just spent the last 5-6 days building R12B-1 on AIX 5.3. I tried to
make notes along the way just in case someone ever again needs to do
this.

The build environment was AIX 5.3 with gcc 4.2.3 and automake 1.8.5-1.
If there are any questions regarding the versions of other packages I
can provide that as well. Mostly I used the most recent version of RPM
from perzl.org or the Linux toolkit cd supplied with AIX.

Most of the problems were in the autoconf/automake files. I have not
used automake before so I am not sure the proper files to make changes
in, so I usually made the same edit in all configure files with the
offending code.

o aix4* had to be changed to aix*
  Did this in all places I found it, don't know where to make the
  proper change.

o in the configure.in or configure files in the erlang root I had to 
  add a case for aix* where the install program is chosen. The current
  version only had a case for osf* and *. The install program therefor
  was /usr/ucb/install, which does not support -d. The choice for aix* 
  is now .../erts/autoconf/install-sh. This was missed in my search for
  aix4*.

o in the configure or configure.in files I had to modify the tests for 
  libgd. The test was for libgd.so only, so I added libgd.a. I only had 
  the choice of the static lib.

o finally, I had to change the #define of "events" in
  erts/emulator/beam/erl_driver.h. The #define conflicted with a   
  #define of events in another header file. Did not take any time to
  track this down. "events" was only used in a few places so no big 
  deal.

After these changes I then could do..

#./configure --with-ssl=/opt/freeware --with-odbc=/opt/freeware
	--with-gd=/opt/freeware

#gmake

#gmake install

With these few changes I think the next release will be much closer to
building out-of-the-box on AIX. Of course this ignores gathering all the
dependent package.

Mark.