Re: lib/Makefile.am:145: GL_GENERATE_STDDEF_H does not appear in AM_CONDITIONAL

[Bruno Haible]

Kevin R. Bulgrien wrote:

> Not knowing how to resolve this last error, I found:
> 
>   http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2011-05/msg00467.html
>   http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-automake/2011-05/msg00023.html
>   https://debbugs.gnu.org/cgi/bugreport.cgi?bug=8718
> 
> Here I see what seems to be an issue that was marked as WONTFIX, and, in the
> debbugs.gnu.org thread, a potential workaround posted by Bruno Haible

It is marked as "won't fix", but in this thread I wrote:

  This solves my problem. Thanks for the idea to use AC_CONFIG_COMMANDS_PRE.
  I will add this workaround to gnulib.

I don't remember why I never implemented this solution. But I believe that
the patch by Paul Eggert from a while later
  https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-gnulib/2011-10/msg00106.html
fixed this problem.

> This is what I did (for starters) with a recent gnulib pulled from git
> a few weeks ago: ...
> 
> As the vendor supplied autotools were dated (automake 1.7.1 and its friends),
> it seemed necessary/prudent to build newer autotools ... successfully done up
> to automake 1.9.6, autoconf 2.6.5, and m4 1.4.9.

Automake 1.9.6 is 13 years old!! We are not supporting such old releases any 
more.
The current gnulib/DEPENDENCIES says that the minimum you need is Automake 
1.11.1
(which is 8 years old); you should better start to use the newest Automake
1.16.1 immediately.

Note also that the GNU build tools distinguish between a development machine
and a target machine. On the development machine you create tarballs with a
configure script; on the target machine you run the configure script and 'make'.
On the development machine, you need recent Autotools; on the target machine
(your very old system) you don't need anything beyond sh, common utilities,
grep, sed, awk, and make.

> With the new tools, progress:
> 
>   $ autoreconf
>   lib/Makefile.am:145: GL_GENERATE_STDDEF_H does not appear in AM_CONDITIONAL
>   autoreconf: automake failed with exit status: 1

Can you reproduce this with the newest Automake and Autoconf? If so, please
make the tarball available so that we can analyze it.

> Does the approach of backing down to an old gnulib seem best

Not at all. We won't spend time on fixing things that cannot be reproduced with
recent gnulib and recent Automake.

Bruno