Holy crap.  I just realized that for some number of weeks, I've been running OS X 10.5.4, and nothing has blown up.  Erlang still works.  GDC still bangs out D binaries (note to self to check up on LLVMDC progress), and overall, I haven't had to recompile anything.

Same with iPhone Software Update 2.0 on my horrifically outdated iPhone 1.0 hardware.

More of those type upgrades, please.

So after the most recent 10.5.3 Leopard upgrade, I go to fire up the Erlang REPL and I get "Bus error."  Evidently this is somewhat common (as noted in #couchdb IRC channel), so I thought I'd just upgrade to a more recent Erlang. 

MacPorts barfs on me, so I decide to clean everything and start over.  Now with no trace of erlang, couchdb, or couchdb-devel, I start again. 

Hitting the megaco flex errors pisses me off, but I find this nice article that helps.  Basically, update flex to 2.5.35 or higher before trying erlang on OS X 5.3.  Here's a sample of the errors:

Error: Target org.macports.build returned: shell command " cd "/opt/local/var/macports/build/ _opt_local_var_macports_sources_rsync.macports.org_release_ports_lang_erlang/work/erlang-R12B-2" && make all " returned error 2
Command output: megaco_flex_scanner_drv.flex:31: unknown error processing section 1
megaco_flex_scanner_drv.flex:31: unknown error processing section 1
megaco_flex_scanner_drv.flex:31: unknown error processing section 1
megaco_flex_scanner_drv.flex:31: unknown error processing section 1
megaco_flex_scanner_drv.flex:31: unknown error processing section 1
megaco_flex_scanner_drv.flex:32: bad character: *

So, given errors surrounding hipe (MacPorts bug, can't find link) I removed it from my install command:

sudo port install erlang -hipe +smp

Cool, now Erlang works.  Let's get a new CouchDB from /trunk...

./bootstrap
./configure --with-erlang=/opt/local/lib/erlang/usr/include --prefix=/opt/local
make
sudo make install

Nice.  Now I have all of the new reduce hotness.

So, I am trying to install mod_python on my Mac.  Seems easy right? 

Macintosh:bin brad$ sudo port install mod_python25
--->  Fetching mod_python25
--->  Verifying checksum(s) for mod_python25
--->  Extracting mod_python25
--->  Configuring mod_python25
--->  Building mod_python25 with target all
Error: Target org.macports.build returned: shell command " cd
[snip] && make all " returned error 2
Command output:
Compiling for DSO.

/opt/local/apache2/bin/apxs
[snip]
libtool: compile: unable to infer tagged configuration
libtool: compile: specify a tag with `--tag'
apxs:Error: Command failed with rc=65536
.
make[1]: *** [mod_python.so] Error 1
make: *** [do_dso] Error 2

Error: Status 1 encountered during processing.



ahem, ok.

The best I can tell, this is due to Leopard and my choice of upgrading to XCode 3.0.  The same error haunted me on Apache 2.2.6, and I found this page to solve it.  Look for the patch by juho@sooey.com on 1/6/2008.  But I couldn't figure out how to fix this for mod_python25.  So, I went looking for libtool and apxs.  I found it in /opt/local/apache2/bin/apxs and edited it to change:

$ltflags or $ltflags = "--silent";

to

$ltflags or $ltflags = "--silent --tag=CC";

And voila... 'sudo port install mod_python25' works like a charm.

Hope this helps you.