./configure --enable-cxx still a disaster on Solaris

[Marc Glisse]

On Mon, 23 Mar 2009, Torbjorn Granlund wrote:

> I don't think this is a problem with Solaris, but with Sun's C++
> compiler.  Or do you have problems also when compiling with the C++
> compiler from the GNU Compiler Collection?

I think it is currently ok, but you could have some std:: issues in the 
future if someone cleans up gcc (though as I am almost the only one 
interested and I don't have time now, this is not so likely to happen).

> I am not an expert on C++, but C++ experts have determined in the past
> that Sun's compiler is just too old and too buggy to compile GMP.  They
> gave up trying to find some syntax for gmpxx.h that would be tolerated
> by Sun's compiler.

Actually, since the removal of the ternary operators, there is nothing too 
hard for the compiler left, and many people have made it work just fine.

There is also an issue with __attribute__((const)) which is understood by 
the C compiler and crashes the C++ one, but this was supposedly fixed in 
the latest express release of the compiler. However, if you are in 
autoconf hacking mood, you might want to fix the fact that autoconf tests 
the C compiler and uses the results for the C++ compiler as well.

> If we can come up with a reasonable workaround, I'd like to support
> Sun's C++ compiler.  By "reasonable" I mean that it should not make
> gmpxx.h much more complex, and not cause performance degradation.

Sun's C++ compiler can use several different standard library 
implementations. With a good one (stlport4 or apache) I think the only 
issue is that gmp.h (and maybe a few other files) uses size_t and va_list, 
whereas it includes cstddef and cstdarg which only provide std::size_t and 
std::va_list (stddef.h and stdarg.h would work). With the old library 
(Cstd) that is kept for backwards compatibility, one also needs to modify 
the facet code a bit: in a couple places in cxx/*.cc, an ugly ifdef 
_RWSTD_NO_TEMPLATE_ON_RETURN_TYPE (or some autoconf test) to add an extra 
argument to the function call. Nothing touches gmpxx.h :-)

Sun's compiler runs on linux and the facet problem can be tested there, 
but the std:: problem can only be tested on solaris and is only visible 
with some libraries (stlport4, not Cstd).

-- 
Marc Glisse