If smartlinking is enabled by appending -CX to fpc.cfg, FPC can build itself on PPC Linux and can build Lazarus, but when lazbuild is used to compile a project I see something like

Free Pascal Compiler version 2.6.2 [2013/02/15] for powerpc Copyright (c) 1993-2012 by Florian Klaempfl and others Target OS: Linux for PowerPC
Compiling SynTest.lpr
Compiling testbase.pas
Assembling testbase
Assembling with smartlinking testbase
/usr/local/share/lazarus-trunk/components/synedit/test/units/powerpc-linux/testbase.sl/TestBase0s87.s: Assembler messages:
/usr/local/share/lazarus-trunk/components/synedit/test/units/powerpc-linux/testbase.sl/TestBase0s87.s:142747: Error: undefined symbol `.Ll2' in operation
/usr/local/share/lazarus-trunk/components/synedit/test/units/powerpc-linux/testbase.sl/TestBase0s87.s:142747: Error: undefined symbol `.Ll1' in operation
..
/usr/local/share/lazarus-trunk/components/synedit/test/units/powerpc-linux/testbase.sl/TestBase0s87.s:145623: Error: undefined symbol `.Ll443' in operation
/usr/local/share/lazarus-trunk/components/synedit/test/units/powerpc-linux/testbase.sl/TestBase0s87.s:145623: Error: undefined symbol `.Ll442' in operation
testbase.pas(652) Error: Error while assembling exitcode 1 /usr/bin/ar: creating
/usr/local/share/lazarus-trunk/components/synedit/test/units/powerpc-linux/libptestbase.a /usr/bin/ar:
/usr/local/share/lazarus-trunk/components/synedit/test/units/powerpc-linux/testbase.sl/Test Base0s87.o: No such file or directory
testbase.pas(652) Error: Error while linking
testbase.pas(652) Fatal: There were 3 errors compiling module, stopping ERROR: failed compiling of project
/usr/local/share/lazarus-trunk/components/synedit/test/SynTest.lpi

Making sure that smartlinking isn't selected eliminates the problem.

Is this something I should be raising as a bug, or accepting as caused by architecture peculiarities?

Please note that either way, this is a request for guidance rather than a complaint.

Mark Morgan Lloyd wrote

If smartlinking is enabled by appending -CX to fpc.cfg, FPC can build itself on PPC Linux and can build Lazarus, but when lazbuild is used to compile a project I see something like

[snip]

I'd say raising a bug. Because either FPC should make sure that smartlinking works correctly or it should at least report a warning or error out on platforms where this isn't supported.

Regards,
Sven

Thanks. I'm fairly confident of my facts but I'll double-check and probably raise as a Lazarus issue.

I'm /hoping/ to find time to exercise FPC etc. on a PPC Mac, which in view of the apparent endian bug could be "interesting".

It looks like a bug in library-based smartlinking. We should probably enable section-based smartlinking on Linux/ppc too, but afaik nobody maintains that platform anymore.

Jonas

I'm not sure I'm up to taking on maintenance on a formal basis: there's just too many things I don't know about the innards of the compiler and related subsystems.

I'm happy to continue trying to test on the systems available to me, some of which are fairly uncommon by today's standards but I like to think that eliminating alignment etc. issues that might show up on some platforms but not others is generally worth doing.