Re: Time to backpatch config/ax_pthread.m4 changes?

On 19/11/2018 19:12, Tom Lane wrote:
> I noticed that buildfarm member quokka (RHEL 7 / ppc64) has started
> failing configure in the 9.4 and 9.5 branches. This appears to be
> because configure is not detecting the need to use "-pthread" to get
> thread-related functions. We didn't change anything in that area
> ourselves, so I'm guessing that this is a result of a platform update,
> which more than likely is going to start affecting other users before
> long, so we'd better fix it.
>
> It looks to me like the reason it's okay in 9.6 and up is
> commit e97af6c8b ("Replace our hacked version of ax_pthread.m4 with
> latest upstream version") plus a few followup fixes. I propose to
> back-patch those into 9.5 and 9.4. Heikki had attempted to back-patch
> into 9.5 originally, but gave up when the followup fixes seemed to
> be getting out of hand --- but there weren't really that many.
> Anyway, now that that code has been stable for several years, I see
> little reason not to back-patch it.

Makes sense.

It would be nice to pick the latest version from the authoritative
source (https://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf-archive/ax_pthread.html),
while we're at it. I picked a draft version back then, before it was
committed to the main branch. Although, if we do that, then the argument
that the code's been stable for several years doesn't apply anymore...

- Heikki