[Radiance-general] Re: Compilation on Solaris 8 SPARC

[Georg Mischler]

Greg Ward wrote:

> Hi Len,
>
> I'm sorry to hear you're still having compile problems.  For some
> reason, your version of the GNU-C headers doesn't include a definition
> of sys_errlist or sys_nerr, which causes the compile of error.c to fail
> in src/common, and subsequently the main Radiance library doesn't get
> built.  The build all falls apart after that, as you noticed....
>
> You will have to manually edit the src/common/error.c file with a plain
> text editor and change the following lines near the top from:
>
> > #ifndef __GNUC__
> > extern char  *sys_errlist[];    /* system error list */
> > extern int  sys_nerr;           /* number of system errors */
> > #endif
>
> to:
>
> > extern char  *sys_errlist[];    /* system error list */
> > extern int  sys_nerr;           /* number of system errors */
>
> (I.e., take off the surrounding precompiler # statements.)  After saving
> the file, rerun "makeall install".  I'm hoping the build will work after
> that, assuming this was the only problem.


Is there any particular reason why you're avoiding the standard
function strerror() from string.h here? As far as I understand
the documentation, sys_errlist and sys_nerr aren't really meant
for direct access by user code.  Or do we really still have to
take pre-ANSI implementations into account? If so, which ones?

Speaking more generally, I'd like to put in a strong vote for
ansifying Radiance completely. Even though this might look like a
highly tedious task (and probably is), I'd expect it to uncover
and eliminate at least a one or two dozen subtle bugs throughout
the code. In the long run, it would make all future development a
lot easier. Of course, if Radiance were to be put on public CVS
later this year, there's no reason why you would have to make
this conversion yourself...


-schorsch

-- 
Georg Mischler  --  simulations developer  --  schorsch at schorsch.com
+schorsch.com+  --  lighting design tools  --  http://www.schorsch.com/