I decided to install Java on my FreeBSD box today. It wasn’t a very good experience. Primary the system is not automated. It requires a lot of manual works.

Anyway, after waiting for couple hours, I found that the process was stuck on glib. The system could not build the /usr/ports/devel/glib20. Here is the error message:

===>  Building for glib-2.34.3
gmake  all-recursive
gmake[1]: Entering directory `/usr/ports/devel/glib20/work/glib-2.34.3'
Making all in .
gmake[2]: Entering directory `/usr/ports/devel/glib20/work/glib-2.34.3'
gmake[2]: Nothing to be done for `all-am'.
gmake[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/ports/devel/glib20/work/glib-2.34.3'
Making all in m4macros
gmake[2]: Entering directory `/usr/ports/devel/glib20/work/glib-2.34.3/m4macros'
gmake[2]: Nothing to be done for `all'.
gmake[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/ports/devel/glib20/work/glib-2.34.3/m4macros'
Making all in glib
gmake[2]: Entering directory `/usr/ports/devel/glib20/work/glib-2.34.3/glib'
gmake  all-recursive
gmake[3]: Entering directory `/usr/ports/devel/glib20/work/glib-2.34.3/glib'
Making all in libcharset
gmake[4]: Entering directory `/usr/ports/devel/glib20/work/glib-2.34.3/glib/libcharset'
gmake[4]: Nothing to be done for `all'.
gmake[4]: Leaving directory `/usr/ports/devel/glib20/work/glib-2.34.3/glib/libcharset'
Making all in update-pcre
gmake[4]: Entering directory `/usr/ports/devel/glib20/work/glib-2.34.3/glib/update-pcre'
gmake[4]: Nothing to be done for `all'.
gmake[4]: Leaving directory `/usr/ports/devel/glib20/work/glib-2.34.3/glib/update-pcre'
Making all in .
gmake[4]: Entering directory `/usr/ports/devel/glib20/work/glib-2.34.3/glib'
  CC       gstrfuncs.lo
  CC       gthreadpool.lo
gstrfuncs.c:330: error: expected '=', ',', ';', 'asm' or '__attribute__' before 'get_C_locale'
gstrfuncs.c: In function 'g_ascii_strtod':
gstrfuncs.c:700: warning: implicit declaration of function 'strtod_l'
gstrfuncs.c:700: warning: implicit declaration of function 'get_C_locale'
gstrfuncs.c: In function 'g_ascii_formatd':
gstrfuncs.c:902: error: 'locale_t' undeclared (first use in this function)
gstrfuncs.c:902: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
gstrfuncs.c:902: error: for each function it appears in.)
gstrfuncs.c:902: error: expected ';' before 'old_locale'
gstrfuncs.c:904: error: 'old_locale' undeclared (first use in this function)
gstrfuncs.c:904: warning: implicit declaration of function 'uselocale'
gstrfuncs.c: In function 'g_ascii_strtoull':
gstrfuncs.c:1148: warning: implicit declaration of function 'strtoull_l'
gstrfuncs.c: In function 'g_ascii_strtoll':
gstrfuncs.c:1195: warning: implicit declaration of function 'strtoll_l'
gmake[4]: *** [gstrfuncs.lo] Error 1
gmake[4]: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs....
gmake[4]: Leaving directory `/usr/ports/devel/glib20/work/glib-2.34.3/glib'
gmake[3]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
gmake[3]: Leaving directory `/usr/ports/devel/glib20/work/glib-2.34.3/glib'
gmake[2]: *** [all] Error 2
gmake[2]: Leaving directory `/usr/ports/devel/glib20/work/glib-2.34.3/glib'
gmake[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
gmake[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/ports/devel/glib20/work/glib-2.34.3'
gmake: *** [all] Error 2
*** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/ports/devel/glib20.
*** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/ports/devel/glib20.

This is not a popular problem. After I google a while, I found a very similar problem here. Basically, the author suggests that the problem may be caused by an uncleaned run of freebsd-update. In short, you need to run the program twice, i.e.,

sudo freebsd-update fetch install
sudo reboot
sudo freebsd-update install

Obviously, it didn’t work for me. So I decided to try my last solution: pkg_add

sudo pkg_add -r glib20

and I tried to resume the installation:

cd /usr/ports/java/jdk16
sudo make install

It worked!

Hope this little trick is helpful to you.

–Derrick