macOS: ld: library not found for -lrt about kiwix-build HOT 3 CLOSED

Rereading your compilation logs, I've seen that the -lrt flags come at the end of the command line and so does not come from xapian pkg-config itself.
If fact it comes from kiwix-tools compilation system itself : https://github.com/kiwix/kiwix-tools/blob/a3a0127edb40df243f08f3de48975fa45f46b964/meson.build#L15-L23

I think those series of lines are no more necessary with the last patches I've made on xapian part.
So we should simply remove them. Can you try on your side to remove them and recompile ?
(Just remove the lines in the kiwix-tools repository in the SOURCE directory) and relaunch kiwix-build.py)

I was writing a long post to explain you what I've done on the xapian part when I found what I've explained above. It is no more really relevant (especially the last part) because it is probably a bug in kiwix-tools build-system but it is still true so I keep it here :

Xapian checks if librt is available and compile with it if it is present. The check is made here (https://github.com/xapian/xapian/blob/master/xapian-core/configure.ac#L421-L437)

However, even if xapian link with librt, the released version of xapian do not add the -lrt flag in the pkg-config file, and then, other compilations (as kiwix-tools) fail because of undefined symbols.

So, I've made a patch to add the -lrt flag when necessary. This patch is patches/xapian_pkgconfig.patch in kiwix-build repository. The present version on master is bugged, I'd discovered it while cross-compiling for android and so, there is another (better) version on android branch. The commit for the fix is df62eea.

This is why I told you to try to recompile xapian with the android branch. To see if the last version of my patch is good enough.

If the -lrt flag is present in you compilation option but the compiler can't find it, this is either a bug in my patch (librt is not present and I the flag anyway) or a bug somewhere else (librt is present, xapian detect it but other compilation steps cannot).
What you can do is have a look on the log files (either in the LOGS directory of kiwix-build or in the xapian's config.log in BUILD_native_dyn/xapian-1.4.2 to see if xapian inded link with the librt.

from kiwix-build.

@automactic Just to mention that I've merged the android branch into master. So the last version of xapian patch is in master now. You can rebase your apple_platforms onto master now.

from kiwix-build.

This now seems to build correctly without errors

from kiwix-build.