Hi All,

Thanks, Scot.

I do my best (but to be honest, I am not sure it is enough):

* It is very difficult to reach a strong level in C programming (and it seems to me that Nicola, Roland, and Mark are the ones for now).
* It is very difficult to understand Xymon (at least for me).
* The build process is also quite difficult.
* The current situation is quite blocking: Mark and Roland maintain FreeBSD and Debian.

  * Their versions have diverged (and they maintain multiple ones), so the first step is to make them converge again without breaking anything. This is quite difficult, because it implies changes to their working branches that could introduce regressions.
  * Then there are new OS versions, with new packaging issues, such as MD5.
  * We also need to understand what to do, how to do it, and learn to work together.
  * At least for me, it is difficult to make progress on the CMake build if packaging and dependencies keep changing.

The main problems I see for now:

1. How to decide what to include in the code base and what not to include.

   * There are already some PRs, but are they done correctly? The PR itself? The code inside it? Do we need guidelines?
   * It seems to me that we need someone to bring consistency to this process. If anyone is willing, could you:
     * Propose guidelines,
     * Take responsibility for driving consistency in reviews and merges,
     * Or suggest a better approach?

2. It seems difficult to perform "real" testing across the full environment of each OS.

   * Docker could help.
   * Any ideas, or would anyone like to help set this up?

Anyway, working a little bit with Nicola and Roland has been very pleasant: professional and very kind.

Bruno

Excellent progress.  Thanks for your had work Bruno, the community appreciates it!

 

Scot Kreienkamp | Applications Infrastructure Architect | La-Z-Boy Corporate 
(734) 384-6403 | 1-734-915-1444 | Scot.Kreienkamp@la-z-boy.com
One La-Z-Boy Drive | Monroe, Michigan 48162 | la-z-boy.com
facebook.com/lazboy  | instagram.com/lazboy | youtube.com/lazboy

From: Bruno Manzoni via Xymon <xymon@xymon.com>
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2026 5:10 PM
To: xymon@xymon.com
Cc: Bruno Manzoni <bruno.manzoni@ubi-network.ch>
Subject: [Xymon] Re: Two Draft PRs: PCRE Compatibility and RRDtool 1.9 Support – Request for Testing: Update

 

Hi all,

2nd follow-up.

1) PCRE2 - Compatibility layer (PCRE1 + PCRE2) vs full migration

I have successfully built the current codebase using PCRE2 only on all the
following platforms (see list below).

The oldest system tested was CentOS 7, and it builds fine.
Note: CentOS 7 packages are no longer available on the standard RHEL repos,
so an archive mirror must be used.

Next step:
I will drop my compatibility branch and move to Roland's work.

Plan:
- Replace PCRE1 with PCRE2 (option 2)
- Use Roland's branch as the base going forward
- Cut a minor release, even if this could have been a major-release item
- Dcoument


2) RRD1.9

Some patches have been applied, but they still need proper testing.
There are quite a few compilation warnings. I have prepared a cleanup
patch, but I will not apply it at this stage.

3) MD5 warnings

Several systems now mark MD5 as deprecated, which generates warnings
during compilation (notably on newer Linux distributions and macOS).

This does not currently break the build, but it impacts clean
compilation on modern systems and should be addressed.

 

Summary: with the current patch set (still needs review), I successfully built:
Both RRD and PCRE changes (as well as MD5 deprecation) have a direct
impact on installing Xymon on newer systems.

Alpine: 3.19/3.20/3.21/3.22/3.23/edge
Arch Linux: latest/base
Ubuntu: 20.04/22.04/24.04
Debian: 11.11/12.13/13.3
CentOS: 7
Rocky Linux: 8/9
AlmaLinux: 8/9/10
Fedora: 40/41/42
openSUSE: 15.5/15.6/16.0/tumbleweed
FreeBSD: 13.5/14.3/15.0
NetBSD: 9.2/9.3/9.4/10.0/10.1
OpenBSD: 7.6/7.7/7.8
macOS: 14/15/26/latest

 

5) CMake build

Plan:
- Reproduce the current configure / make / make install workflow
- Keep both build systems in parallel for some time

CMake is not intended to replace the current build immediately.
This will be a gradual transition.


Bruno

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