Re: .tar.xz only policy

[Christian Weisgerber]

Jim Meyering:

> > FWIW, xz cannot be built with GCC 2.95 (or older), making it
> > unavailable on some platforms such as OpenBSD/vax.
> 
> Thanks for the report.
> This is the first I've heard about anyone being unable to build xz.

xz requires a C99 compiler because it intermingles declarations and
statements throughout.  That's an explicit choice by its author.

> Seriously though, I asked Lasse Collin (xz author) about this issue
> and he said he thought there was an OpenBSD patch to make xz build
> even when you're stuck with gcc-2.95.

I can authoritatively state that there is not.
(If somebody knows a C-to-C compiler tool that can move declarations
to the top of a block, let me know.)

> For now, I suggest you download the tarball to some other system
> and uncompress it before copying it to your ancient vax.

Well, for an automated build infrastructure
http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq15.html#Ports
this means re-hosting a suitable tarball elsewhere.

-- 
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          address@hidden