rasmol @2.7.4.2: error: no such file or directory: 'DarwinMachineDefines'

[richard-evans (Dr. Richard Evans)]

Hi rasmol fails to build on M1/bigsur with the following error:

MOLDIR=\"/opt/local/share/rasmol/\" -DTHIRTYTWOBIT            -D_USE_RASMOL_H_     -c -o repres.o repres.c
:info:build clang: clang: clang: clangclang: : error: no such file or directory: 'DarwinMachineDefines'

It seems like an old definition that was recently removed in macOS, but I can't find any reference to it in the source code and google is unhelpful. Removing the definition "DarwinMachineDefines" in the makefile seems to fix it (it installs OK after that and runs fine) but not sure the best way to patch the port (bit of a port newbie) and whether removing this is in general safe.

Any thoughts?

Many thanks,

Richard

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

Normally you should submit a main.log file when you encounter a build failure. But I tried a build on our Apple Silicon build machine and got the same problem, so that log is sufficient:

​https://build.macports.org/builders/ports-11_arm64-builder/builds/20536/steps/install-port/logs/stdio

Something is supposed to be defining DarwinMachineDefines to the set of flags that are appropriate for your system. That "something" was probably written before Apple Silicon machines existed, so it doesn't define DarwinMachineDefines to anything on your system, so the literal string DarwinMachineDefines gets inserted instead, which is wrong.

I haven't yet found what is (supposed to be) defining DarwinMachineDefines in this case. I did find it for example here:

​https://cgit.freedesktop.org/xorg/util/cf/tree/darwin.cf

And I found a previous reference to this kind of problem in #22528 (which was on Snow Leopard which was when Apple's gcc started defaulting to 64-bit compiles, so at that time it was probably the x86_64 architecture that wasn't being handled in the code.)