Bug#618033: off_t vs long int

[Pierre Schnizer <p.schnizer@gsi.de>]

Hi

>> The configure script for kpathsea includes the appropriate tests
>> for _FILE_OFFSET_BITS and _LARGEFILE.  But these tests are disabled
>> as the "Build" file disables large file support.
>>
>> A  discussion [1] (see comment in the "Build" source on [2] linea
>> ~74) on using large file support has already been between debian
>> and texlive (here focused on dvips).
>>
> Yes, I was working already on LFS support for dvips (i.e. not the
> source code, but tried to build w/ LFS enabled). IIRC I had already
> the idea to enable LFS support in the Build script, but this did not
> solve the problem, see http://bugs.debian.org/383781, at least not
> for dvips.

I did these builts and use them since 2 days or so. It solves it for
dvips for writing the file.

> 
> If you look at the build log, you'll notice that the two options you
> suggested (and which are probably needed/correct) never occur in it
> (see http://home.amasol.de/~preusse/tl_2009_build_lfs_enabled.bz2).
I looked to your log and I can see that it did the checks correctly
(line 371). One can not see them along the kpathsea compile lines
but later down the file.

> 
> And no, dvips wasn't able to write files > 2GB^1. Could you test on
> your system, if commenting out the disable-lfs option generates a
> pdftex binary, which is able to write on cifs?

I used latex + dvips with a ~90 page document, whose main part I
included 20 times. latex compiles this now ~1500 pages document
and builds the table of contents. Dvips writes the file and
well it is readable.   But not with evince any more, which fails
to open the file as soon as it gets bigger than 2GB. Ghostview also
fails to open the file.
psselect opens the file and but fails while seeking along the pages.
I downloaded the source and hacked on it (defining all "long"'s as "long
long"' ones, and changing fseek/fteel to
fseeko/fteelo) ..
so that  I could extract the last pages.
So I could verify that the last pages are really typed text and not
trash. I did not inspect all 1500 pages ;-)

These options work for me. But processing postscript files with more
than 2GB further will probably generate more problems down the road ...

I hope I find time tomorrow to try to get over 2GB with pdflatex. This
will be more of a challenge (or I use attachfile and include the debian
install isoimage a few times to the pdf file).

Pierre