[Rd] Abuse of a private glibc symbol in R 3.2.3

[Alba Pompeo]

Here is my log from 'make check' using an Intel i5 64-bit processor -
http://pastebin.com/raw/N6SYAuFX
Here is Isaac's log from 'make check' using an Intel Atom 32-bit
processor - http://pastebin.com/raw/sey6DEk9

We are both on Alpine Linux, which uses the musl libc. http://www.musl-libc.org/

Thank you very much.



On Thu, Jan 28, 2016 at 9:54 AM, Alba Pompeo <albapompeo at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hello, developers of R.
>
> I have been unsuccessfully trying to build R on a musl libc system for
> the last days.
> ./configure works, but make fails. The command that errors out is here
> - http://pastebin.com/raw/UwFRsiqT
>
> It was brought to my attention that this is a (very longstanding)
> abuse of a private
> glibc symbol in R.
>
> In R 3.2.3, it seems that configure is trying to test for it on Linux.
> It apparently fails to accurately test (as demonstrated by the link error),
> perhaps because the test program does not actually *use* __libc_stack_end
> so it gets optimized out. (See line 35500 or so in R-3.2.3/configure.)
> Ideally, the test program would check that a pointer to __libc_stack_end
> is non-null, but that's an autoconf bug.
>
> A work around was to 'export r_cv_libc_stack_end=no' before configuring R.
> However, there are a couple little issues with non-ASCII text and a
> *lot* of math differences, many of which say "*no* convergence: NOTIFY
> R-core!".
>
> Until these are resolved, R can't be packaged for distributions that
> use musl, such as Alpine Linux.
>
> Thank you.