Re: gcc-2.95.2 hang with cpp

["Zack Weinberg" <zackw at stanford dot edu>]

On Tue, Nov 28, 2000 at 05:27:16PM -0800, Jean Mao wrote:
> Dear Sir/Madam:
> 
>       I downloaded gcc-2.95.2 source and build/install on
> a SunOS 5.6 Generic_105181-21 sun4u sparc SUNW,Ultra-2.
> I tried to build a small c programm and gcc hangs and:
> 
> jmao@okinawa><>ps -a | fgrep cpp
>  28112 pts/6    S  0:00 cpp -lang-c -D__GNUC__=2 -D__GNUC_MINOR__=95
> -Dsparc -D
>  28113 pts/6    S  0:00 cpp -lang-c -Asystem(unix) -Asystem(svr4)
> -Acpu(sparc)
>  28114 pts/6    S  0:00 cpp -lang-c -Asystem(unix) -Asystem(svr4)

Mangled installation.  The compiler driver (gcc) goes and looks for
an internal executable called "cpp", but finds only the user-usable
preprocessor, which also happens to be named "cpp".  That program is
actually a version of the compiler driver.  So it goes and looks for
the same internal executable, finds itself, executes itself,
... repeat until process table overflows.

Without any details of how you have installed gcc, I can't tell you
how to fix it.

In the development tree, the internal executable has been renamed
"cpp0", which means that in the same situation you'll get an immediate
error: "installation problem, cannot exec cpp0" rather than running
the machine into the ground.

[To whoever is maintaining the 2.95 branch: would you like me to
backport that change?  This problem does keep coming up.]

zw