(This file public domain. Originally written by Mojca Miklavec, 2015-16.) Compiling TeX binaries on Solaris (The document describes the procedures used on Sparc Solaris binaries, but the same rules should apply to i386 and x86_64 as well.) Solaris 9 has been out of official support for a while and making software compile on that platform is challenging, so it hardly makes any sense to try to support it. Solaris 10 reaches end of support in January 2021: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_(operating_system)#Version_history and TeX Live binaries try to stay compatible with that OS version. Every once in a while a new Update is shipped: U1 2006-01 U2 2006-06 U3 2006-11 U4 2007-08 U5 2008-05 U6 2008-10 U7 2009-05 U8 2009-10 U9 2010-09 U10 2011-08 U11 2013-01 and the problem is that binaries compiled on an updated system might not run on an older one. You can check the libc version with > pvs -no /usr/lib/libc.so > pvs -d /lib/libc.so.1 | grep SUNW SUNW_1.23; SUNW_1.22.7; SUNW_1.22.6; /.../ SUNW_1.1; SUNW_0.9; SUNW_0.8; SUNW_0.7; Building wget ============= Building wget on the latest version of Solaris 10 will make the binary useless on older Updates of Solaris 10 as it would depend on SUNW_1.22.7. One option to build wget in a "compatible way" would be to build it on Solaris 9 with "cc". The other hack is the usage of map files. To make it work on older systems the following hack was used (thanks to the OpenCSW community): https://buildfarm.opencsw.org/source/xref/opencsw/csw/mgar/pkg/wget/trunk/files/map.wget > cat mapfile libc.so - SUNW_1.22 SUNWprivate_1.1 $ADDVERS=SUNW_1.22; export LD_OPTIONS="-M $PWD/mapfile" And the following configuration was used to get rid of dependencies (which are not installed on Solaris by default): > ./configure --enable-ipv6 --disable-iri --disable-nls \ --disable-ntlm --disable-pcre --without-libiconv-prefix \ --without-libintl-prefix --without-libuuid --without-libpsl \ --without-ssl --without-zlib The binary was built with gcc 5.2. The definition '#define _XOPEN_SOURCE 500' has been removed from 'src/sysdep.h' to avoid compile error due to the fact that GCC 5 switched to -std=99. > pvs Master/tlpkg/installer/wget/wget.sparc-solaris libsocket.so.1 (SUNW_1.4); libnsl.so.1 (SUNW_1.7); librt.so.1 (SUNW_1.2); libc.so.1 (SUNW_1.22, SUNWprivate_1.1); > ./Master/tlpkg/installer/wget/wget.sparc-solaris --version GNU Wget 1.17.1 built on solaris2.10. +digest -gpgme -https +ipv6 -iri +large-file -metalink -nls -ntlm +opie -psl -ssl (That list of configure options is current as of the above version of wget; not all those dependencies are present in earlier versions.) Building xz =========== The xz binaries would likewise depend on SUNW_1.22.6 by default, so we used the same hack with a map file to make it work on slightly older systems. > cat mapfile libc.so - SUNW_1.22 SUNWprivate_1.1 $ADDVERS=SUNW_1.22; > export LD_OPTIONS="-M $PWD/mapfile" > ./configure --disable-nls --disable-shared > pvs Master/tlpkg/installer/xz/xz.sparc-solaris librt.so.1 (SUNW_1.2); libpthread.so.1 (SUNW_1.2); libc.so.1 (SUNW_1.22); > pvs Master/tlpkg/installer/xz/xzdec.sparc-solaris libc.so.1 (SUNW_1.22); If users need binaries to run on even older systems, we can target what is desired by changing the map file. Building texlive ================ Additional settings were needed to compile TeX Live with gcc 5.2: * ./Build --without-iconv The '--without-iconv' makes sure to avoid linking against libiconv which is not available on SunOS by default.