Expected an UID followed by a ':' make: *** [Makefile:130 : compiler] Error 255

I was trying to build the Sather compiler, everything was going fine and I got this error with make :

Creating C for installation compiler...

Boot/sacomp     -verbose -O_fast -O_no_move_while -O_no_hoist_const -O_no_cse -only_reachable Compiler/sacomp.module -o Bin/sacomp -only_C
/usr/local/src/sather-1.2.3/System/Common/CONFIG:1:error, expected an UID followed by a ':'
make: *** [Makefile:130 : compiler] Erreur 255

This doesn't seem to be a dependency problem (and I think I installed them all). Here is the whole output if it can help (sorry my computer is in french) :

make[1] : on entre dans le répertoire « /usr/local/src/sather-1.2.3/System/Common »
make[1]: rien à faire pour « all ».
make[1] : on quitte le répertoire « /usr/local/src/sather-1.2.3/System/Common »

Making serial library: System Socket 
Containers 

Making platform BOOT...
make[1] : on entre dans le répertoire « /usr/local/src/sather-1.2.3/System/Platforms/BOOT »
make[1]: rien à faire pour « all ».
make[1] : on quitte le répertoire « /usr/local/src/sather-1.2.3/System/Platforms/BOOT »
Making platform linux...
make[1] : on entre dans le répertoire « /usr/local/src/sather-1.2.3/System/Platforms/linux »
make[1]: rien à faire pour « all ».
make[1] : on quitte le répertoire « /usr/local/src/sather-1.2.3/System/Platforms/linux »

Making boot compiler...

make -C System/Platforms/linux boot CC='gcc'
make[1] : on entre dans le répertoire « /usr/local/src/sather-1.2.3/System/Platforms/linux »
ln -sf `pwd`/header.h ../BOOT
make -C /usr/local/src/sather-1.2.3/Boot/sacomp.code CC=gcc
make[2] : on entre dans le répertoire « /usr/local/src/sather-1.2.3/Boot/sacomp.code »
make[2]: « ../sacomp » est à jour.
make[2] : on quitte le répertoire « /usr/local/src/sather-1.2.3/Boot/sacomp.code »
rm -f ../BOOT/header.h
make[1] : on quitte le répertoire « /usr/local/src/sather-1.2.3/System/Platforms/linux »

Creating C for installation compiler...

Boot/sacomp     -verbose -O_fast -O_no_move_while -O_no_hoist_const -O_no_cse -only_reachable Compiler/sacomp.module -o Bin/sacomp -only_C
/usr/local/src/sather-1.2.3/System/Common/CONFIG:1:error, expected an UID followed by a ':'
make: *** [Makefile:130 : compiler] Erreur 255

Any help, or an easier way to install Sather on Ubuntu

The issue seems to be that the sather System/Common/Makefile uses The C Preprocessor, cpp to preprocess CONFIG.proto into CONFIG. Since cpp does not know that the intended output is sather rather than C, it processes and inserts the standard header file /usr/include/stdc-predef.h at the start of the CONFIG file, as you can verify by doing

cpp -dI System/Common/CONFIG.proto | head

Because make variable CPP is defined in the top-level Makefile as CPP=/lib/cpp -C -P, comments in the input files are not suppressed. So the CONFIG file ends up with a big /* C-style */ comment block at the top, which apparently chokes the sather parser (which apparently expects comments to start with -).

The inclusion of the stdc-predef.h seems to have been introduced in GCC 4.8, and the recommended way to enforce backward compatibility is with the option -ffreestanding (although this option does not appear to be documented in the cpp man page):

make clean
make CPP='cpp -ffreestanding -C -P'

You should then be able to execute ./Bin/sacomp as follows

SATHER_HOME=. ./Bin/sacomp
There is no class named MAIN.

(presumably it expects to be given the name of one or more source files).

See Porting to GCC 4.8 .