solution to AIX "file *.lo contains an incorrect file suffix" error

Our PHP 4.3.0 build failed to compile sapi/cli/php on our AIX machine, with over one hundred error messages like: cc: 1501-218 file ext/ctype/ctype.lo contains an incorrect file suffix The causes of this are rather subtle: 1. GNU libtool will usually not create static objects under AIX. 2. But the PHP developers want libtool to create static objects. 3. So the PHP developers provide their own ./libtool in the source tree which will create them, which they run with "/bin/sh libtool". 4. Unfortunately, while "/bin/sh <file>" usually looks for <file> in the current directory before searching through $PATH, on AIX it looks through $PATH first; thus the PHP Makefile winds up running /usr/local/bin/libtool (or wherever you have it installed) instead. Thus the solution is to modify the PHP Makefile so that the line LIBTOOL = $(SHELL) libtool --silent instead reads LIBTOOL = $(SHELL) ./libtool --silent Technical notes: When you compile and install libtool, it runs a script called libtool.m4 which, around line 2363 in the libtool-1.4.3 source, disables AIX static linking with the explanation that: "On AIX, shared libraries and static libraries use the same namespace, and are all built from PIC." It disables static linking by setting enable_static=no when it writes your libtool script; the ./libtool script in the PHP build directory works precisely because this variable is set to "yes" instead. -- Brandon Craig Rhodes brandon@rhodesmill.org http://rhodesmill.org/brandon