Leopard PPC: webkit-gtk @2.0.1: configure fails to find glib2: absolute address to symbol _glib_micro_version in a different linkage unit not supported in _main

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

Trying to configure webkit-gtk @2.0.1 on Leopard ppc fails with this message:

:info:configure checking for GLIB - version >= 2.36.0... no
:info:configure *** Could not run GLIB test program, checking why...
:info:configure *** The test program failed to compile or link. See the file config.log for the
:info:configure *** exact error that occured. This usually means GLIB is incorrectly installed.
:info:configure configure: error: You need the GLib dev tools in your path

Certainly the correct version of glib2 is already installed.

The config.log reveals the real problem, though I don't understand it or know what to do about it:

configure:17118: checking for GLIB - version >= 2.36.0
configure:17233: /Volumes/Data/macports/leopard/bin/clang-mp-3.2 -o conftest -pipe -Os -arch ppc -D_REENTRANT -I/Volumes/Data/macports/leopard/include/glib-2.0 -I/Volumes/Data/macports/leopard/lib/glib-2.0/include -I/Volumes/Data/macports/leopard/include  -DGTEST_USE_OWN_TR1_TUPLE=1 -D__MAC_OS_X_VERSION_MAX_ALLOWED=1050 -L/Volumes/Data/macports/leopard/lib -arch ppc conftest.c -L/Volumes/Data/macports/leopard/lib -lgmodule-2.0 -lgthread-2.0 -lgio-2.0 -lgobject-2.0 -lglib-2.0 -lintl   >&5
ld: absolute address to symbol _glib_micro_version in a different linkage unit not supported in _main from /tmp/conftest-kPCwIl.o
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
clang: error: linker (via gcc) command failed with exit code 1 (use -v to see invocation)
configure:17233: $? = 1
configure: program exited with status 1

It was previously reported in comment:ticket:38006:6.

[dershow]

Cc Me!

[cooljeanius (Eric Gallager)]

Cc Me!

[fra.sa@…]

hi!same problem here in trying to install seahorse. the installation fails while installing the dependency webkit-gtk with the same error here reported in the above log. I then tried to change compiler and I used gcc 4.8. This time I passed the configure phase but then the building phase fails with the error "The MacroAssembler is not supported on this platform."

[fra.sa@…]

Cc Me!

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

Replying to ryandesign@…:

ld: absolute address to symbol _glib_micro_version in a different linkage unit not supported in _main from /tmp/conftest-kPCwIl.o

This same type of error is happening for boost too, also on Leopard PowerPC; see #39870. boost also uses clang on that system. Why is clang having this complaint, and only on PowerPC?

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

Excluding these two MacPorts tickets, there's ​only one occurrence of this type of error in all of Google: ​this file in someone's game which has this comment:

    // fix for "ld: absolute address to symbol _NSApp in a different linkage unit not supported"
    // (OS X 10.6) when building for PPC

This comment was added in ​this revision. The problem in their case was with the symbol _NSApp; they were using NSApp throughout their app, and their fix was to declare a static variable nsapp and assign [NSApplication sharedApplication] to it and use that variable everywhere. I don't know if or how this solution applies to the issues we're seeing in webkit-gtk and boost but it's the only lead I can find.

[jeremyhu (Jeremy Huddleston Sequoia)]

I think this is just not going to get fixed.