Yet further rethinking of build changes for macOS Mojave.

The solution arrived at in commit e74dd00f5 presumes that the compiler
has a suitable default -isysroot setting ... but further experience
shows that in many combinations of macOS version, XCode version, Xcode
command line tools version, and phase of the moon, Apple's compiler
will *not* supply a default -isysroot value.

We could potentially go back to the approach used in commit 68fc227dd,
but I don't have a lot of faith in the reliability or life expectancy of
that either.  Let's just revert to the approach already shipped in 11.0,
namely specifying an -isysroot switch globally.  As a partial response to
the concerns raised by Jakob Egger, adjust the contents of Makefile.global
to look like

CPPFLAGS = -isysroot $(PG_SYSROOT) ...
PG_SYSROOT = /path/to/sysroot

This allows overriding the sysroot path at build time in a relatively
painless way.

Add documentation to installation.sgml about how to use the PG_SYSROOT
option.  I also took the opportunity to document how to work around
macOS's "System Integrity Protection" feature.

As before, back-patch to all supported versions.

Discussion: https://postgr.es/m/20840.1537850987@sss.pgh.pa.us

configure

@@ -627,6 +627,7 @@ ac_includes_default="\
 
 ac_subst_vars='LTLIBOBJS
 vpath_build
+PG_SYSROOT
 PG_VERSION_NUM
 PROVE
 FOP
@@ -18815,6 +18816,15 @@ _ACEOF
 
 
 
+# If we are inserting PG_SYSROOT into CPPFLAGS, do so symbolically not
+# literally, so that it's possible to override it at build time using
+# a command like "make ... PG_SYSROOT=path".  This has to be done after
+# we've finished all configure checks that depend on CPPFLAGS.
+if test x"$PG_SYSROOT" != x; then
+  CPPFLAGS=`echo "$CPPFLAGS" | sed -e "s| $PG_SYSROOT | \\\$(PG_SYSROOT) |"`
+fi
+
+
 
 # Begin output steps
 

configure.in

@@ -2357,6 +2357,15 @@ $AWK '{printf "%d%04d", $1, $2}'`"]
 AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED(PG_VERSION_NUM, $PG_VERSION_NUM, [PostgreSQL version as a number])
 AC_SUBST(PG_VERSION_NUM)
 
+# If we are inserting PG_SYSROOT into CPPFLAGS, do so symbolically not
+# literally, so that it's possible to override it at build time using
+# a command like "make ... PG_SYSROOT=path".  This has to be done after
+# we've finished all configure checks that depend on CPPFLAGS.
+if test x"$PG_SYSROOT" != x; then
+  CPPFLAGS=`echo "$CPPFLAGS" | sed -e "s| $PG_SYSROOT | \\\$(PG_SYSROOT) |"`
+fi
+AC_SUBST(PG_SYSROOT)
+
 
 # Begin output steps
 

doc/src/sgml/installation.sgml

@@ -2513,6 +2513,57 @@ PHSS_30849  s700_800 u2comp/be/plugin library Patch
    </para>
   </sect2>
 
+  <sect2 id="installation-notes-macos">
+   <title>macOS</title>
+
+   <indexterm zone="installation-notes-macos">
+    <primary>macOS</primary>
+    <secondary>installation on</secondary>
+   </indexterm>
+
+   <para>
+    On recent <productname>macOS</productname> releases, it's necessary to
+    embed the <quote>sysroot</quote> path in the include switches used to
+    find some system header files.  This results in the outputs of
+    the <application>configure</application> script varying depending on
+    which SDK version was used during <application>configure</application>.
+    That shouldn't pose any problem in simple scenarios, but if you are
+    trying to do something like building an extension on a different machine
+    than the server code was built on, you may need to force use of a
+    different sysroot path.  To do that, set <varname>PG_SYSROOT</varname>,
+    for example
+<programlisting>
+make PG_SYSROOT=<replaceable>/desired/path</replaceable> all
+</programlisting>
+    To find out the appropriate path on your machine, run
+<programlisting>
+xcodebuild -version -sdk macosx Path
+</programlisting>
+    Note that building an extension using a different sysroot version than
+    was used to build the core server is not really recommended; in the
+    worst case it could result in hard-to-debug ABI inconsistencies.
+   </para>
+
+   <para>
+    You can also select a non-default sysroot path when configuring, by
+    specifying <varname>PG_SYSROOT</varname>
+    to <application>configure</application>:
+<programlisting>
+./configure ... PG_SYSROOT=<replaceable>/desired/path</replaceable>
+</programlisting>
+   </para>
+
+   <para>
+    <productname>macOS</productname>'s <quote>System Integrity
+    Protection</quote> (SIP) feature breaks <literal>make check</literal>,
+    because it prevents passing the needed setting
+    of <literal>DYLD_LIBRARY_PATH</literal> down to the executables being
+    tested.  You can work around that by doing <literal>make
+    install</literal> before <literal>make check</literal>.
+    Most Postgres developers just turn off SIP, though.
+   </para>
+  </sect2>
+
   <sect2 id="installation-notes-mingw">
    <title>MinGW/Native Windows</title>
 

src/Makefile.global.in

@@ -241,6 +241,7 @@ BITCODE_CXXFLAGS = @BITCODE_CXXFLAGS@
 
 CPP = @CPP@
 CPPFLAGS = @CPPFLAGS@
+PG_SYSROOT = @PG_SYSROOT@
 
 override CPPFLAGS := $(ICU_CFLAGS) $(CPPFLAGS)
 

src/template/darwin

@@ -3,14 +3,15 @@
 # Note: Darwin is the original code name for macOS, also known as OS X.
 # We still use "darwin" as the port name, partly because config.guess does.
 
-# Some configure tests require explicit knowledge of where the Xcode "sysroot"
-# is.  We try to avoid having this leak into configure's results, though.
+# Select where system include files should be sought.
 if test x"$PG_SYSROOT" = x"" ; then
   PG_SYSROOT=`xcodebuild -version -sdk macosx Path 2>/dev/null`
 fi
 # Old xcodebuild versions may produce garbage, so validate the result.
 if test x"$PG_SYSROOT" != x"" ; then
-  if test \! -d "$PG_SYSROOT" ; then
+  if test -d "$PG_SYSROOT" ; then
+    CPPFLAGS="-isysroot $PG_SYSROOT $CPPFLAGS"
+  else
     PG_SYSROOT=""
   fi
 fi