Subject: Re: t3900 failure on macOS, iconv(3) broken?

From: Collin Funk <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 08 Dec 2025 20:03:47 -0800

Yee Cheng Chin <[email-masked]> writes:

>> * macOS 14.8.2
>>   * These tests pass.
>> It looks like the system iconv is broken on macOS 15 or later.
>
> I'm a little surprised that these tests pass in macOS 14 with native
> (aka not from Homebrew) iconv. Apple replaced GNU iconv with a custom
> version in macOS 14, which also caused a fair bit of breakages among
> other third-party software. I would have expected this CI test to
> break on macOS 14 unless this is a new behavior change / bug
> introduced in macOS 15.
>
> But yes, one way to fix it is to just provide the Homebrew GNU iconv
> via ICONVDIR.

FWIW, the GNU iconv maintainer expressed frustration with the buggy
iconv implementation in macOS 14 [1]. He blamed Apple-specific patches
on FreeBSD's implementation.

Collin

[1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2024-05/msg00375.html