Gnucobol not compiling

General system Applications
1

Not sure if this is the right place but… I’m trying to install gnucobol using yay. I’ve used it before and everything was fine but now when I try to install it I get the following errors:

common.c: In function ‘print_info_detailed’:
common.c:9714:17: error: implicit declaration of function ‘xmlCleanupParser’ [-Wimplicit-function-declaration]
9714 | xmlCleanupParser ();
| ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
make[2]: *** [Makefile:614: common.lo] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory ‘/home/dave/.cache/yay/gnucobol/src/gnucobol-3.2/libcob’
make[1]: *** [Makefile:657: all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory ‘/home/dave/.cache/yay/gnucobol/src/gnucobol-3.2’
make: *** [Makefile:565: all] Error 2
==> ERROR: A failure occurred in build().
Aborting…
→ error making: gnucobol-exit status 4
→ Failed to install the following packages. Manual intervention is required:
gnucobol - exit status 4

Does anyone know how to fix this?

Thanks in advance for any help.

2

It might be the gcc compiler failing. Try downgrading the gcc compiler.

3

Please forgive my lack of knowledge but how would I do that?
Much thanks for the quick reply.

4

Look at this reply. It contains the command.

5

Thanks again for your help. I’ve tried the command but I’m now having a problem with the package name. When I do a pacman -Q it lists the installed packages but for gcc there is a space in the name. Samething in the AUR. I’ve tried several variations to figure out the real package name but I’m at a loss.

Knowing that I can’t even get the name right on the current package I have no idea on how to find the name of the previous package.

Please forgive me but I’m brand new to EndeavourOS/Arch. I really need specific info on this in order to proceed with your recommendation.

Thanks again for your help.

6

I had to bail out for a while and choose another distro to get my COBOL back.
Some of the Slackware guys had these same problems and a few others. They were using a different branch of thier sofware called -current rather than their stable version 15. In Slackware -current is much the same as Debian Sid. In -current they were using the 6.9 kernel and gcc 14. They determined that there was a change in one of the parameters for the 6.9 kernel. A change in a parameter was setting mitigations to y where it was always set to n in the past. They changed the parameter with CONFIG_MITIGATION_GDS_FORCE back to n. They recompiled the kernel and everything worked so they sent out an updated kernel.
I can’t remember which kernel I was on here but it’s something to be aware of.

It appears that, for me here, I need to downgrade gcc gcc-libs and possibly gcc-fortran to get working. From what I’ve read this is how to get there:
Install downgrade from the AUR – yay -S downgrade.
Once installed you can type sudo downgrade gcc and it will provide a list from which you can pick which version you want to revert to.
The items can be blacklisted if you want in /etc/packman.conf by entering – IgnorePkg = gcc.
More than one item can be placed in that line, separated by a space.

If I’m wrong on any of this please let me know. I’m anxious to do a reinstall of EndeavorOS to see if this all works.