reinplace -E doesn't work when /usr/bin/sed switches from BSD sed to GNU sed or vice versa

[ekawahyu (Ekawahyu Susilo)]

This is a known issue of incompatibility between BSD sed (Mac) and GNU sed (macports). I don't know where to file this issue, therefore, I put it here as note/enhancement request.

In the past, I renamed /usr/bin/sed to /usr/bin/darwinsed and created a symbolic link of /usr/bin/sed -> /opt/local/bin/gsed. It turned out that building arm-none-eabi-binutils failed because of this, and it is fine when I put the symbolic link back to BSD sed.

I did not keep the log file, but I copy the error message below:

--->  Verifying checksum(s) for arm-none-eabi-binutils
--->  Checksumming binutils-2.21.53.0.1.tar.bz2
--->  Extracting arm-none-eabi-binutils
--->  Extracting binutils-2.21.53.0.1.tar.bz2
Error: reinplace: /usr/bin/sed: -e expression #1, char 42: Invalid character class name
Error: Target org.macports.patch returned: reinplace sed(1) failed
Warning: the following items did not execute (for arm-none-eabi-binutils): org.macports.activate org.macports.patch org.macports.configure org.macports.build org.macports.destroot org.macports.install
Error: Failed to install arm-none-eabi-binutils
Log for arm-none-eabi-binutils is at: /opt/local/var/macports/logs/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_tarballs_ports_cross_arm-none-eabi-binutils/arm-none-eabi-binutils/main.log
Error: The following dependencies were not installed: arm-none-eabi-binutils libmpc mpfr
Error: Status 1 encountered during processing.
To report a bug, see <http://guide.macports.org/#project.tickets>

This is only a minor issue and I hope this could help someone else who replaces the BSD sed with GNU sed, like I did.

The arm-none-eabi-binutils builds just fine using BSD sed. Thank you.

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

You shouldn't replace OS X's BSD sed with a GNU sed. Many programs' configuration scripts are hardcoded with the knowledge that on Darwin, sed is BSD sed; you'll break those by doing this.

If you want GNU sed in your PATH for your own convenience, install the gsed port and add /opt/local/libexec/gnubin to your PATH.

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

In the specific case you found above, it's not arm-none-eabi-binutils' configuration program; it's MacPorts base itself, which has a "reinplace" command which portfiles can use, which is basically a wrapper to sed. The relevant reinplace that's demonstrating the problem is in the crossbinutils portgroup that the arm-none-eabi-binutils port (and the other cross-compiled binutils ports) use:

browser:trunk/dports/_resources/port1.0/group/crossbinutils-1.0.tcl?rev=69962#L89​

The -E switch that this reinplace is using means "use extended (i.e. modern) regular expressions". With BSD sed, the way to do that is to pass it the argument -E. With GNU sed, the argument is -r. MacPorts base's configure script will detect whether your sed is BSD sed or GNU sed and pass the correct argument:

browser:trunk/base/aclocal.m4?rev=80222#L912​

So the only reason this failed for you is that you configured and installed MacPorts base back when you had BSD sed, and then later you replaced sed with GNU sed -- or you installed MacPorts base from one of our pre-compiled disk images, which are built on such a system.