On Tue, Dec 09, 2025 at 08:35:34PM -0800, René Scharfe wrote:

The library function iconv(3) supplied with macOS versions 15.7.2
(Sequoia) and 26.1 (Tahoe) is unreliable when doing conversions from
ISO-2022-JP to UTF-8 in multiple steps; t3900 reports this breakage:

  not ok 17 - ISO-2022-JP should be shown in UTF-8 now
  not ok 25 - ISO-2022-JP should be shown in UTF-8 now
  not ok 38 - commit --fixup into ISO-2022-JP from UTF-8

As a workaround, use libiconv from Homebrew, if available.

While I think Homebrew libraries are usually better than the ones that
come with the system, there are reasons why you would prefer not linking
with them and therefore forcing Homebrew as a dependency of your binaries.

One particularly good reason is that if you are building a fat binary (
useful if you target recent macOS which still supports x86_64 but don't
want to distribute different versions per CPU type) then the system
library (even if broken) might be preferred.

Slightly off topic, but should another patch that adds a `NO_HOMEBREW`
Makefile flag similar to `NO_FINK` or `NO_APPLE_PORTS` be added to help
drive this?

Carlo