comments on Xerces-c for HP-UX 10.20 pa-risc2.0 (HP9000/800)

[Kitching Simon <Si...@orange.ch>]

Hi,

I've recently started evaluating Xerces-C, and have a few observations to
offer and a (simple) request for info.

I'm using an HP9000/800 running HPUX 10.20, and Xerces-c-src_1_0_1.

On the Xerces information page, it says that there's a port available, but I
can't see it on the downloads page (just windows & linux). 
I never did find the binaries, so ended up recompiling the source.....

After recompiling, I have the following items to report (you may wish to add
them to the documentation???)
(a) the config.guess module doesn't recognise my hardware type (sets type to
UNKNOWN in the generated makefiles).
    Fix:  I added "9000/800" to configure.guess (in both src and samples
directories)
    (also works to "configure -host 'hppa2.0-hp-hpux10.20'", but that means
not using runConfigure)
(b) the CC (cfront) compiler doesn't like the code at all - internal
compiler exception. Some of these were fixable by tweaking the
     code, but I eventually struck a problem I couldn't easily work around.
    Fix: tell runConfigure to use aCC (compiles fine..)
(c) the runConfigure (correctly) deduces that I have DEC/DCE threads and not
pthreads available, and sets -DXML4_USE_DCE. However, I still get a
     "cannot find <pthread.h> from file
"utils/Platforms/HPUX/HPPlatformUtils.cpp" (no such header file exists on my
machine).
     Quick-Fix: hack runConfigure to set "threadingDefines=-DAPP_NO_THREADS"
for hp-10
(d) make doesn't build the final library.
    Quick-Fix: to cd into libs directory, and run "make" manually.
    (may be related to problem following...?)
(e) the "samples" makefiles don't appear to use XERCESCROOT correctly.
    I have set XERCESCROOT to a directory other than the one in which the
source code resides.
    The build process correctly finds the source code in the current
directory, and puts the objects into the destination directory.
    However, the samples makefile cannot find the source code files (looks
in destination directory..)
    Quick-Fix: copy the samples source code into the "build destination"
directory, and run the make from there.

Finally I''ve got it running, and I have noted the following:
(1) if a DOM_Node is a null node, then calling any methods on it causes a
bus error/core dump. This took me a little by surprise. Perhaps a note in
the examples, or DOM_Node.hpp file might help??

Now for the request:
I can't figure how to "cast" up the "hierarchy".
In particular, I have a DOM_Node, which is of type ELEMENT_NODE. How do I
build a DOM_Element referring to the same node??
Yes, I can use the DOM_Node methods, but would prefer to cast it and then
use the more convenient DOM_Element methods..
Presumably I'm missing something very simple...


Regards & thanks

Simon Kitching
Simon.Kitching@orange.ch