[I'm cross-posting to the nettle list and a debian bug, so please take care when replying]

The issue is that there are some differences in generated nettle header files depending on architecture and compiler version.

Francois Gouget fgouget@free.fr writes:

Here is a proposed patch for the compiler version issue in nettle-stdint.h:

$ cat debian/patches/multiarch.patch --- a/aclocal.m4 +++ b/aclocal.m4 @@ -857,7 +857,7 @@ fi # shortcircut to system "stdint.h" # ------------------ PREPARE VARIABLES ------------------------------ if test "$GCC" = "yes" ; then -ac_cv_stdint_message="using gnu compiler "`$CC --version | head -1` +ac_cv_stdint_message="using gnu compiler $CC" else ac_cv_stdint_message="using $CC" fi

If we go this path, maybe just drop the conditional and unconditionally print "using $CC"? I'm not sure about the reason for displaying the version, but I guess some older gcc versions did stdint and/or inttypes.h differently.

If you have the time, it would be helpful to look at the latest version of AX_CREATE_STDINT_H (from autoconf archive) and see if it does anything differently. Nettle uses a pretty old version (which seems to work fine).

For GMP_NUMB_BITS here are some thoughts:

You must understand that nettle defines GMP_NUMB_BITS only if configured with --enable-mini-gmp. This configuration is not intended to be compatible with anything else, and should never be installed on a normal debian system. It's intended for small embedded systems which needs to verify digital signatures, but which consider the real libgmp too large.

• Is it really necessary to install version.h? IMHO the right place for other packages to figure out library versions is through some scripting in the configure script rather than through a header.

This has been requested by users. Not everyone uses autoconf. And it's very common practice, I think both gmp and gnutls have similar version defines.

• GMP_NUMB_BITS is already defined by libgmp-dev in gmp.h. More

preceisely

Exactly, and when not configuring with --enable-mini-gmp, that's the definitions which is used.

Getting into the details, Nettle's definition of GMP_NUMB_BITS conceptually belongs in mini-gmp.h. However, mini-gmp is a standalone package which doesn't use autoconf. And it has to be a preprocessor *constant*, so definiting it like sizeof(unsigned long) * CHAR_BIT won't cut it, since the preprocessor doesn't understand sizeof.

Therefore the definition, for the --enable-mini-gmp configuration which needs it, should be in a nettle include file. Then the cleanest way would be to omit the definition completely when not using --enable-mini-gmp. I haven't done that, because it would make the substitution logic harder, and because I was thinking that

#define NETTLE_USE_MINI_GMP 0 #if NETTLE_USE_MINI_GMP # define GMP_NUMB_BITS 64 #endif

is harmless whatever value appears in the second define. If it helps, I guess this could be changed into the architecture independent

#define NETTLE_USE_MINI_GMP 0 #if NETTLE_USE_MINI_GMP # define GMP_NUMB_BITS the moon is made of green cheese #endif

Opinions?

Regards, /Niels