GNS3/dynamips

libelf deprecation on macOS

Opened this issue · 4 comments

Hello

I am a maintainer of the Homebrew project and wanted to give a small heads up: we would like to deprecate libelf on macOS.

The upstream libelf website is gone, the remaining source code can only be through archive.org ... (since at least 2019, which was 5 years ago ...). dynamips is one of the last projects that is using libelf in macOS.

Are there any plans for a replacement solution on your side?

If it's only a matter of changing the build system to use a compatible library or different libelf source, then I'm willing to do that. Just point me to what should be used.

If it requires changing C code, then only if someone adds Coverity Scan.
I'm willing to fix what shows up there and then handle this too.

I think it's harder than expected, see the ongoing discussion here: avrdudes/avrdude#1653

Indeed. Since Dynamips is the only project that needs libelf, maybe we could consider embed it in our repository and use it to build on macOS?

This feels like something that should be done in Homebrew...

The problem is libelf only being available through archive.org.
Dynamips already points users to elfutils-libelf-devel on Redhat based systems, so it's already a compatible replacement.
Why not have a formula for elfutils-libelf in Homebrew?

The whole of elfutils might be hard due to linux-only stuff, but the libelf in elfutils by itself should be doable.
Then Homebrew can deprecate libelf in favor of elfutils-libelf.