[Dlang-internal] Cannot build dmd from git going from v2.78.3

[Patrick Schluter]

On Wednesday, 15 May 2019 at 08:08:21 UTC, Sebastian Wilzbach 
wrote:
> Well, what you need to do is bootstrapping as DMD is now 
> written fully in D.
>
> tl;dr: you need to set HOST_DMD after you build 2.078 for all 
> future builds. However, as this is a very old release, chances 
> that things don't work are pretty high.
>
> You could also give the dmd-cxx branch a go. IIRC it doesn't 
> pass the full DMD testsuite, but it might just be enough to 
> build a newer DMD compiler.
>
> Also, LDC and GDC have a better maintained C++ branch (LTS for 
> LDC and e.g. official GCC 9.1 for GDC) which very likely might 
> work better for you.
>
> To build current DMD master you will need a dmd compiler with a 
> frontend of 2.076 or higher (>= GDC 8), so it might require 
> multiple hops to build the latest, greatest DMD from scratch.
>
> On 15 May 2019 09:50:42 Patrick Schluter via Dlang-internal 
> <dlang-internal at puremagic.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>>
>> I have a problem with the dmd git repository. I cannot compile 
>> de
>> compiler for versions newer than v2.78.2.
>> I can build every version up until v2.78.2. When I try to build
>> v2.78.3 I get following error message:
>>
>> CC="c++" dmd -lib -of../generated/linux/release/64/lexer.a -m64
>> -J../generated/linux/release/64 -L-lstdc++ -version=MARS -fPIC 
>> -w
>> -de dmd/console.d dmd/entity.d dmd/errors.d dmd/globals.d
>> dmd/id.d dmd/identifier.d dmd/lexer.d dmd/tokens.d dmd/utf.d
>> dmd/root/array.d dmd/root/ctfloat.d dmd/root/file.d
>> dmd/root/filename.d dmd/root/outbuffer.d dmd/root/port.d
>> dmd/root/rmem.d dmd/root/rootobject.d dmd/root/stringtable.d
>> dmd/root/hash.d
>> dmd/entity.d(2387): Error: undefined identifier __equals in
>> module object
>> make[1]: *** [../generated/linux/release/64/lexer.a] Error 1
>> rm optabgen.out
>> make[1]: Leaving directory
>> `/ec/dev/server/euramis/u000/schlupa/D/dmd/src'
>> make: *** [all] Error 2
>> error: make failed
>>
>> Does anyone have an idea what can be wrong? Is something 
>> missing
>> somewhere?
>>
>>
>> PS: the machine this is built on is an old Linux RHEL 5 which
>> config is stuck to what it was when it initially came out. I
>> don't have sudo or root access on it and all tools and 
>> programs I
>> need have to be built from source, either from packets or git
>> repos. Installing ready made binaries does not work in general.
>> I know, it sucks but I cannot change the policies of our IT
>> environment.

Thank you.
I managed to get it to compile by starting from 0. I 
re-downloaded everything in a new directory and used the 
BOOTSTRAP=1 option and it managed to work. Apprently my proxy 
setting is ok now as that didn't work last time I had tried 
several months ago. So the binary dmd downloaded managed to 
compile everything as it should and all worked well now.
What I will test in anycase when I have time, is if I can 
reproduce my issue because I think it is somehow interesting.
You see, the downloaded dmd when bootstrapping is 2.79.1 which is 
a version ulterior to the one I was not able to build. What I 
think is that you can build dmd with its predecessor up until 
version 2.78.2.
Any version after that, even 2.78.3, fails to be built with an 
older version, and as Carl said below, it is probably not a dmd 
issue but a druntime problem.

In practice, I don't think it is problematic per se, as in most 
cases binary distributions and the BOOTSTRAPPING works as 
intended, but it is a little issue that can be annoying in cases 
of extreme no binary download policies like we have in our IT 
infrastructure.

As said, I will check that later.