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

From: Tom Lane <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2018 12:12:45 -0500

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.

			regards, tom lane

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From: Heikki Linnakangas <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2018 19:42:23 +0200

> 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

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From: Tom Lane <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2018 12:48:34 -0500

> that the code's been stable for several years doesn't apply anymore...

Hm.  I'll check that, but I'm inclined to just make any change like that
in HEAD, since we aren't aware of live bugs it would fix.

			regards, tom lane