From: Tom Lane <tgl@sss.pgh.pa.us>
To: Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com>
cc: Peter Eisentraut <peter@eisentraut.org>,
        Zhang Mingli <zmlpostgres@gmail.com>,
        PostgreSQL Hackers <pgsql-hackers@lists.postgresql.org>
Subject: =?UTF-8?Q?Re:_[BUG=3F]_macOS_(Intel)_build_warnings:_"ranlib:_fil?=
         =?UTF-8?Q?e_=E2=80=A6_has_no_symbols"_for_aarch64_objects?=
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Comments: In-reply-to Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com>
	message dated "Wed, 04 Feb 2026 10:54:22 -0600"
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Date: Wed, 04 Feb 2026 13:27:43 -0500
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Nathan Bossart <nathandbossart@gmail.com> writes:
> Hm.  The options I see for fixing this seem to be:

> * Pass -no_warning_for_no_symbols flag on this platform, but that option
> might not be available in older toolchains.

> * Add a random symbol to this file.  That seems like a hack.

> * Add build logic to only compile this file when necessary.  I've been
> trying to get rid of complexity here, so this feels like a step backwards.

> IMHO none of these options seem worth the effort to fix a warning on an
> obsolescent platform, so my vote is to do nothing for now.

The idea I'd had was to simply merge pg_popcount_aarch64.c
and pg_popcount_x86.c into one file.  Since each one is basically
one giant #ifdef block conditioned on a different symbol, they'd not
interfere.  But I wouldn't propose this unless it made sense from
a code-structure viewpoint, and I'm not sure it does.  It could
make sense if there was some code that could be shared, but I'm
not seeing much.

			regards, tom lane