Re: MetaPost 1.004 announcement

[Taco Hoekwater <taco@elvenkind.com>]

Thomas A. Schmitz wrote:
> 
> I have two questions/problems with the new release:
> 
> 1. for my linux box, I just grabbed the linux tarball, but the 
> binaries in there still declare they're version 1.003. Is that an 
> oversight, or are those indeed old binaries (and you forgot to pack
>  the new ones? :-)

Answered by Peter and Luigi. I 've fixed the repository versions
of texmfmp.c, and will probably update the tarballs tomorrow
(I also have to add that mpboxes.pdf)

> 2. On OS X 10.5 (intel), compilation aborts with this message:

This is the same problem Hans van der Meer ran into with MPlib
a while back. Somehow configure fails to notice that OS X 10.5
has standard C headers just like any other Unix.

If you look at  the configure output, it will say somewhere in
the middle:

   checking for ANSI C header files... no

The build error is a result of that. Hans van der Meer came up
with the following answer (but I have *no* idea how to implement):

> Eureka! I think I found it (took a lot of experimentation).
> 
> Playing with the optimizing options through CFLAGS and setting the
> architecture to the G4 status of my Mac Powerbook, miraculously
> Metafont1.002 did compile under MacOSX10.5. Experimentally I then
> established that the architecture should be specified on the gcc call
> in order to have the proper ANSI headers found; without these
> compilation will get stuck.
> 
> The options that I think relevant are (both CFLAGS and CXXFLAGS
> should be set):
> 
> 1. general architecture specification: CFLAGS -arch ppc      (for
> powerpc) CFLAGS -arch ppc64    (for the new 64bit binaries on
> powerpc) CFLAGS -arch i386     (for intel) I did not check the ppc64
> (not needed) and i386 (not having one) options.
> 
> 2. more specific architecture specification affecting instruction set
> and scheduling if one wants to tune the generated code to ones
> processor: CFLAGS -mcpu=G4 (-mcpu=G5 etc. whichever ones machine has)
> 
> 
> It would be most natural, I think, if the -arch switch is added
> standard through the autoconf scripts. Taco could see to that for
> metapost and luatex, I trust. Can someone mail this experience to the
> maintainers of pdftex? (I could not ascertain why pdftex compiles
> without problems).
> 
> Hans van der Meer

Best wishes,
Taco
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