Re: Problems with iconv in base and static linking

On Wed, 21 Aug 2013 21:49+0200, Dimitry Andric wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> While packaging my just-rebuilt ports today, I noticed a strange message
> occurring during the package creation stage:
> 
> $ sudo make -C /usr/ports/ports-mgmt/pkg repackage
> ===>  Building package for pkg-1.1.4_1
> Creating package for pkg-1.1.4_1

> Service unavailable

I'd just like to voice my opinion over the mostly meaningless error 
message. It's an insult to us users, and us system administrators in 
particular. Please do better by providing error messages that 
adequately explains what went wrong. Now that's an idea for GSoC. ;-)

> $
> 
> In fact, *every* make package/repackage produces the "Service
> unavailable" message.  The message is actually produced by the pkg(8)
> command, which is run as follows:
> 
> /usr/local/sbin/pkg-static create -o /usr/ports/packages pkg-1.1.4_1
> 
> Now comes the interesting part: if you use /usr/local/sbin/pkg instead,
> the "Service unavailable" message does *not* appear.
> 
> It turns out this is because pkg(8) uses libarchive, which is now
> compiled with iconv support from base by default.  But the iconv in base
> does *not* work properly in statically linked executables.  For example,
> take this small program:
> 
> #include <err.h>
> #include <iconv.h>
> 
> int main(void)
> {
>         iconv_t ic = iconv_open("UTF-8", "ISO-8859-1");
>         if (ic == (iconv_t)-1)
>                 err(1, "iconv_open failed");
>         iconv_close(ic);
>         return 0;
> }
> 
> If you compile and link this statically, it will produce:
> 
> $ cc -static iconv-test.c -o iconv-test-static
> $ ./iconv-test-static
> iconv-test-static: iconv_open failed: Invalid argument
> Service unavailable$
> 
> The reason for the message is that libc's iconv tries to dlopen(3) a
> dynamic library in /usr/lib/i18n, which does not work in static
> executables.
> 
> As a quick fix for pkg(8), we could build the static version of
> libarchive without -DHAVE_ICONV and friends.  This also helps other
> consumers of libarchive that link statically.
> 
> Of course, there may be other consumers of libc's iconv that might want
> to link statically, so it should really be fixed there instead.  For
> example, by not doing the dlopen, and failing gracefully.  Or maybe by
> actually linking in (a subset of) the /usr/lib/i18n libraries.
> 
> -Dimitry

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