Re: Running bootstrap script fails on Debian unstable

[Mihai Moldovan]

* On 2/20/23 10:28, John Paul Adrian Glaubitz wrote:
> I wanted to start the current GRUB master branch on various architectures and 
> it
> turns out that the bootstrap script currently fails on Debian unstable due to
> the autoconf syntax changes:
> 
> running: AUTOPOINT=true LIBTOOLIZE=true autoreconf --verbose --install 
> --force -I m4  --no-recursive
> [...]
> autoreconf: running: /usr/bin/autoconf --include=m4 --force
> configure.ac:429: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_CHECK_HEADERS
>       If this token and others are legitimate, please use m4_pattern_allow.
>       See the Autoconf documentation.
> configure.ac:520: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_LINK_IFELSE
> configure.ac:1631: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_LANG_CALL
> autoreconf: error: /usr/bin/autoconf failed with exit status: 1
> ./bootstrap: autoreconf failed
> 
> Does anyone know how to address this issue?

Nothing that would immediately stick out. How is this invoked? Are you using
sbuild to build the package in an automatic fashion, maybe even via buildd? Can
you reproduce it locally (but still in a clean chroot, like via passing
--anything-failed-commands='%SBUILD_SHELL' to the sbuild call and having an
interactive shell) to easily debug this?

AC_CHECK_HEADERS should be defined in /usr/share/autoconf/autoconf/headers.m4
(and additionally in the frozen m4 file at
/usr/share/autoconf/autoconf/autoconf.m4f , but I've never really grasped the
concept of frozen m4 files) and AC_LINK_IFELSE in
/usr/share/autoconf/autoconf/lang.m4 .

These are standard macros, so if autoconf cannot find them, something really
weird must be going on. You'll probably have to strace autoreconf to figure out
what it's reading. Unfortunately, debugging autotools is a nightmare.



Mihai

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