>
> A message in the Borland newsgroups prompted this question. Is there a
> Firebird port for AIX?
>
There must indeed be a firebird port for AIX.
The following is a summary of one developer's experience with Firebird/AIX.
He's had some problems with the firebird mailing list, so he contacted me
directly for some help with resolving problems with his UDF's.
I asked him to summarize his experience since it might be helpful to others.
I believe the 'rant' has to do with the fact that the expected location of
UDF's changed between IB V5 and V6.
There's something for both Firebird developers and AIX users here.
Tom
- - - - -
....... here is a brief synopsis of what I went through to get this stuff
working. You can post this to the list as is or edited if you feel it is
appropriate.
[ Posted Unedited ]
1) Downloaded FirebirdCS-0.9-4.AIX.bff.Z and installed in. No problems.
2) Tried to compile my app using xlc. Everything compiles fine but can't
link.
3) Find, download and install gcc for AIX.
4) Recompile using gcc. Now some of my embedded SQL apps won't compile
because the source file is too big (I think). I get errors from the
assembler about unacceptably large offsets.
5) Compile embedded SQL with xlc, everything else with gcc. Everything
links except UDF.
6) Looked for but could not find an example of how to build a UDF for
AIX. The stuff in the examples directory does not seem to have an AIX version.
7) Spent a day or so rummaging through the firebird makefiles to find out
how those shared libraries are made.
8) Copied that stuff from the firebird makefile to mine and hey presto,
the UDF links. Now I think I'm in good shape. Little did I know.
9) Install the UDF into /usr/interbase/lib just like I have always done
for IB5. Used a DECLARE FUNCTION ... MODULE_NAME
'/usr/interbase/lib/libudf.so' ... to define the function.
10) Test the UDF by issuing a SELECT and Interbase tells me that it can't
find the entry point or module.
11) Spend a day trying various fruitless variations of the above and
verifying that I had indeed built the UDF correctly.
12) Contacted you and found out that the shared library must be in the UDF
directory.
13) Move the shared library and changed the DECLARE FUNCTION to remove the
absolute path and now everything works.
14) Now that I know what the problem is, I go back and read the manual and
find that this behaviour is actually documented.
begin rant {
I really wish that software designers would design in new features without
breaking code that has worked for years. It is all well and good to
improve the product by adding new features, but deliberately breaking
existing code is unacceptable. Simply telling people that it is broken by
burying a small reference to the fact deep in the manual is also not
acceptable. Speaking just for myself I don't have the time or the
inclination to re-read an entire manual set every time I get a new release.
It also seems bizarre that sticking an absolute path in front of the
library name doesn't override the default setting.
All this ranting is not directed at the firebird developers specifically
since I know that this stuff was broken before it was open sourced, but I
believe that this is something we should all bear in mind before we start
hacking in new features.
} end rant
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