mercury/README.AIX.md

Mercury on AIX

This file documents the port of Mercury to AIX.

Mercury was minimally tested on AIX in 2025 with the following configuration.

• AIX 7.3 on POWER9.
• GCC version 10.3.0
• High-level C grades (hlc.gc, hlc.par.gc).

Prerequisites

Install dnf using a script:

/usr/opt/perl5/bin/lwp-download \
    https://public.dhe.ibm.com/aix/freeSoftware/aixtoolbox/ezinstall/ppc/dnf_aixtoolbox.sh
chmod +x dnf_aixtoolbox.sh
./dnf_aixtoolbox.sh -d

Then install the necessary packages:

dnf install tar gcc make flex bison

Building with GCC

GCC defaults to -maix32. To build for the 64-bit AIX ABI, it is easiest to create a shell script containing:

#!/bin/sh
exec gcc -maix64 "$@"

Mark the script executable, then set up the environment:

export PATH=/opt/freeware/bin:$PATH
export CC=/path/to/gcc-maix64
export OBJECT_MODE=64

OBJECT_MODE=64 is required if using /usr/bin/ar as the archive tool. If you try to use GNU ar (from binutils) instead, you will run into problems when /usr/bin/ranlib is invoked on archives created by GNU ar.

Add the following to Mmake.params before running make. This prevents gcc overflowing the PowerPC TOC when creating the mercury_compile executable.

EXTRA_CFLAGS=-mminimal-toc

Your own programs may also overflow the TOC, depending on their size.

Building with IBM XL C

(Last tested in 2014.)

To use the IBM XL C compiler, pass --with-cc=xlc when configuring the Mercury installation. Use high-level C grades for better performance.

Large programs will overflow the TOC. You can try passing the option -qpic=large to the C compiler and the linker, or passing -bbigtoc to the linker.

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