Re: MXE Octave: "... has no symbols" warning under Mac OS X

[Alexander Hansen]

On 8/27/13 4:58 AM, Ben Abbott wrote:
> On Aug 27, 2013, at 4:26 AM, Anirudha Bose wrote:
>
> > I have been working on reusing mxe-octave [1] to natively build Octave for Mac 
> > OS X. I have been able to complete the build process for the target 
> > i686-apple-darwin11, but the executable usr/bin/octave doesn't launch Octave. 
> > Here is the error I see.
> >
> > dyld: Library not loaded: libcholmod.so
> >    Referenced from: /Users/mac6-user1/./mxe-octave/usr/bin/octave
> >    Reason: image not found
> > Trace/BPT trap: 5
> >
> > I tried to trace back the error and saw that the library libcholmod.so belongs 
> > to the package suitesparse. The following is a part of the log of suitesparse,  
> > which I think is responsible for the above error.
> >
> > ar rv  libcholmod.a cholmod_aat.o cholmod_add.o cholmod_band.o 
> > cholmod_change_factor.o cholmod_common.o cholmod_complex.o cholmod_copy.o 
> > cholmod_dens$
> > ar: creating archive libcholmod.a
> > /opt/local/bin/ranlib: file: libcholmod.a(cholmod_ccolamd.o) has no symbols
> > /opt/local/bin/ranlib: file: libcholmod.a(cholmod_csymamd.o) has no symbols
> > /opt/local/bin/ranlib: file: libcholmod.a(cholmod_metis.o) has no symbols
> > /opt/local/bin/ranlib: file: libcholmod.a(cholmod_nesdis.o) has no symbols
> > /opt/local/bin/ranlib: file: libcholmod.a(cholmod_camd.o) has no symbols
> > /opt/local/bin/ranlib: file: libcholmod.a(cholmod_l_ccolamd.o) has no symbols
> > /opt/local/bin/ranlib: file: libcholmod.a(cholmod_l_csymamd.o) has no symbols
> > /opt/local/bin/ranlib: file: libcholmod.a(cholmod_l_metis.o) has no symbols
> > /opt/local/bin/ranlib: file: libcholmod.a(cholmod_l_nesdis.o) has no symbols
> > /opt/local/bin/ranlib: file: libcholmod.a(cholmod_l_camd.o) has no symbols
> >
> >
> > I suppose the problem is because Mac OS "ar" is not standard. I have also 
> > noticed these warnings with other packages too. Can anyone tell me how to get a proper 
> > build under Mac OS X?
> >
> > [1] http://hg.octave.org/mxe-octave
> >
> > - Anirudha
>
> MacOSX's toolchain avoids the use of static libraries (I assume to avoid 
> violating GNU licenses).  That is likely at the root of the problem.
>
> In any event, I expect that both Fink and Macports include an "ar" with their 
> basic installation.
>
> Ben

You assume incorrectly in the case of Fink. :-)  We use the system's "ar".

It looks to me like the problem could be that 
/Users/mac6-user1/./mxe-octave/usr/bin/octave wants to link 
"libcholmod.so", which would be 
/Users/mac6-user1/./mxe-octave/usr/bin/libcholmod.so .  You can check 
this scenario using "otool -L 
/Users/mac6-user1/./mxe-octave/usr/bin/octave" .

--
Alexander Hansen, Ph.D.
Fink User Liaison
My package updates: http://finkakh.wordpress.com/