PHP 4.0.6 branch, bug #4630

This is a message I sent to Andi; he asked that I send it to the list in hopes that somebody with more AIX and libtool experience might be able to better address the issue: Andi, I'm responding to your message of 5-11-2001 in the php-dev list regarding the open critical bugs for 4.0.6. I realize bug #4630 isn't exactly a highly-visible issue, since it only appears on AIX. However, among AIX users, it's a very widespread problem; this isn't the result of an isolated weird system setup. I've received e-mails from many other AIX administrators who have encountered the same problem, and I've read many messages on the web that reference the bug report. Working through channels at IBM, I was able to get an AIX compiler expert to investigate the issue; he was able to reproduce the problem immediately, and he was able to identify exactly what the php compilation process was doing incorrectly (as described in the bug report). The resolution you see in the bug report is the result of that effort. Unfortunately, implementing the fix permanently requires knowledge of libtool and the php source that I don't have. I don't believe relying on gcc is an adequate solution, and I think others would agree. Not everyone uses gcc, particularly on AIX. We use IBM's compilers because they'll produce architecture-independent binaries we can use across all our RS/6000 systems. Additionally, the few times I tried compiling with gcc, I had even less success than with the IBM compilers. At any rate, the problem should be fully documented in the bug report, and the fix has been verified to work. If someone with more knowledge of the source could implement the fix in a more elegant manner, I and many other AIX users would be very grateful. - Dave