May 31, 2011

Compiling Alpine on Solaris 11

Guest Author

I use alpine as my primary e-mail client. In order to get it compiled for Solaris 11 (snv_166 and later), you will need to make a few changes to the source.

[paulie@adrenaline ~]$ uname -orv
5.11 snv_166 Solaris
[paulie@adrenaline ~]$ ./configure --with-ssl-include-dir=/usr/include/openssl
[paulie@adrenaline ~]$ gmake

We run into a problem ...

In file included from osdep.c:66:
scandir.c: In function `Scandir':
scandir.c:45: error: structure has no member named `dd_fd'

Let's investigate:

[paulie@adrenaline ~]$ vi /usr/include/dirent.h
#if defined(__USE_LEGACY_PROTOTYPES__)
/* traditional SVR4 definition */
typedef struct {
        int     dd_fd;          /* file descriptor */
        int     dd_loc;         /* offset in block */
        int     dd_size;        /* amount of valid data */
        char    *dd_buf;        /* directory block */
} DIR;                          /* stream data from opendir() */
#else
/* default definition (POSIX conformant) */
typedef struct {
        int     d_fd;           /* file descriptor */
        int     d_loc;          /* offset in block */
        int     d_size;         /* amount of valid data */
        char    *d_buf;         /* directory block */
} DIR;                          /* stream data from opendir() */
#endif  /* __USE_LEGACY_PROTOTYPES__ */

Interesting, so alpine *should* be using POSIX instead of the older UNIX SVR4 definitions. Let's make a change to the scandir.c file, which is located in alpine-2.00/imap/c-client/scandir.c. On line 45 I see the following use of dd_fd:

  if ((!dirp) || (fstat (dirp->dd_fd,&stb) < 0)) return -1;

Let's change that dd_fd to d_fd.

  if ((!dirp) || (fstat (dirp->d_fd,&stb) < 0)) return -1;

After recompile, everything works as expected. I'm sure there is a better way of fixing this problem, but considering how trivial this issue is, a small edit is sufficient.

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Comments ( 4 )

guest Wednesday, June 13, 2012

Thank you for posting this.
guest Sunday, March 24, 2013

Thank you!!! I've been trying to install Alpine for a week & kept getting that error. Cheers!
-John
guest Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Thank you! That was extremely helpfu.
guest Thursday, May 30, 2013

Interesting, you were able to solve the problem by modifying the source code and re-compiling. I wonder if talented non-oracle employees could do the same with an oracle product?
Someone had to point out the hypocrisy :)

Compiling Alpine on Solaris 11

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