🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <creiman.705623895@void> creiman@void.ncsa.uiuc.edu (Charlie Reiman) writes:

   I found groff installation simply intolerable. I
   eventually just gave up hope of building any of the groff packages.

I'm sorry you found groff installation `intolerable'.

   It
   assumed far too many things about my local setup, such as: having c++,

Given that groff is written in C++, this is inevitable.  I don't see
how any installation procedure could avoid this requirement.

   making sure it was a special, _compatible_ version,

It doesn't have to be a `special, _compatible_' version.  You can use
g++ 1.x, gcc/g++ 2.1, cfront 2.0, cfront 2.1 or cfront 3.0.  Groff
won't compile with cfront versions up to 1.2, but they have been
obsolete for several years.

   or that I could
   patch the code for gcc.

gcc 2.1 has a bug that can cause `delete' occasionally to pass the
wrong address to free().  I couldn't find any way to work around this
bug other than patching gcc.  g++ 1.40.3 needs no patches to compile
groff.

   It was hunting for include files I have never
   seen (osfcn.h?).

C++ include files are different from C include files.  osfcn.h is a
C++ include file.  Did you install the C++ include files from libg++
as mentioned in the groff INSTALL file?

   C++ code and C code had the same file suffix, which
   confuses gcc 2.1.

Using a suffix of .c for C++ files causes no problems for gcc 2.1 if
you use the -xc++ option, or the g++ script that comes with gcc.

If you (or anybody else) has particular suggestions for improvements
to groff installation, I should be glad to receive them.

James Clark
jjc@jclark.com