Re: Building in Solaris 11.4

[Eric Blake <eblake@redhat.com>]

On 6/24/20 4:31 PM, Michele Denber wrote:
> While trying to run configure in Solaris 11.4, I quickly run into:
> 
> root@hemlock:~/qemu-5.0.0# ./configure
> ./configure[62]: local: not found [No such file or directory]

> grep: illegal option -- e
> Usage: grep [-c|-l|-q] -bhinsvw pattern file . . .
> ./configure[62]: local: not found [No such file or directory]

You've uncovered multiple portability issues, where even though 
configure expects to run with #!/bin/sh, it uses some non-POSIX-isms.


> Line 62 is
> 
>      local compiler="$1"
> 
> I'm not familiar with this construct.  What does "local" do?  It wasn't
> in the configure file for QEMU 2.12.  (And I already said "cc=gcc")

local is a bash-ism (ksh has it to) that changes how variables are 
scoped within shell functions.  The options to fix it are to either: 
avoid local and use global variables everywhere (and worrying about 
naming collisions when one function calls another), or to tweak 
configure so that it re-exec's itself under bash if it detects that 
/bin/sh is not up to our usage expectations.  (configure scripts 
generated by Autoconf do the latter, but qemu doesn't use autoconf).

grep -e is also a non-portable construct; it might be possible to change 
that line to call egrep instead, or to rewrite the regex to not need 
extended regex.

As a short-term workaround, you can always do:

/path/to/bash ./configure

to run it under a shell that won't choke on our use of non-posix constructs.

-- 
Eric Blake, Principal Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc.           +1-919-301-3226
Virtualization:  qemu.org | libvirt.org