Re: Cannot compile m4 1.4.18 with clang 4.0

[Bruno Haible]

> Thompson, KT wrote:
> > As reported at https://github.com/LLNL/spack/issues/4883, there appears to 
> > be a problem compiling m4 (version 1.4.18) on Linux with LLVM clang 4.0.  
> > The error is:
> > 
> > ...
> >   CC       m4.o
> >   CC       builtin.o
> >   CC       debug.o
> >   CC       eval.o
> >   CC       format.o
> >   CC       freeze.o
> >   CC       macro.o
> >   CC       input.o
> >   CC       output.o
> >   CC       path.o
> >   CC       symtab.o
> >   CCLD     m4
> > ../lib/libm4.a(xmalloc.o): In function `xnmalloc':
> > .../m4-1.4.18/lib/xmalloc.c:(.text+0x71): undefined reference to `__muloti4'
> 
> That appears to be a bug in clang.
> 
> > 
> > Is there a known work around or patch to resolve this issue?  This same 
> > version of m4 appears to compile w/o issue for several versions of gcc.
> 
> I don't know if the bug has already been fixed in gnulib (the provider
> for xmalloc.c) ...
>  In the meantime, I'm adding gnulib in cc to see if this is a known issue.

Yes, this is a known issue [1].

No, I don't think this is in the scope of gnulib to fix. Rather, it's the
person who installs and uses clang who needs to be careful. See comment 12
of [1].

Bruno

[1] https://bugs.llvm.org/show_bug.cgi?id=16404