bug#16530: Bootstrapping fails with missing "m4/cu-progs.m4"

[Pádraig Brady]

On 04/23/2014 06:27 PM, April Arcus wrote:
> I'm having a similar problem on a fresh install of Ubuntu 14.04:
> ===
> $ ./bootstrap
> ./bootstrap: Bootstrapping from checked-out coreutils sources...
> ./bootstrap: consider installing git-merge-changelog from gnulib
> ./bootstrap: getting gnulib files...
> ./bootstrap: getting translations into po/.reference for coreutils...
> receiving incremental file list
> ./
> 
> sent 37 bytes  received 655 bytes  197.71 bytes/sec
> total size is 16,363,502  speedup is 23,646.68
> ./bootstrap: autopoint --force
> sh: 1: build-aux/git-version-gen: not found
> /usr/bin/m4:configure.ac:451: cannot open `m4/cu-progs.m4': No such file or 
> directory
> autom4te: /usr/bin/m4 failed with exit status: 1
> autopoint: *** Missing version: please specify in configure.ac through a line 
> 'AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION(x.yy.zz)' the gettext version the package is using
> autopoint: *** Stop.
> ===
> $ autoconf --version | head -n1
> autoconf (GNU Autoconf) 2.69
> $ automake --version | head -n1
> automake (GNU automake) 1.14.1
> $ gettext --version | head -n1
> gettext (GNU gettext-runtime) 0.18.3
> $ gcc --version | head -n1
> gcc (Ubuntu 4.8.2-19ubuntu1) 4.8.2
> $ m4 --version | head -n1
> m4 (GNU M4) 1.4.17
> $ git describe --always
> v8.22-71-g14613e2

I can reproduce with gettext 0.18.3.1
Ah yes: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.coreutils.general/4708/

gettext reported 0.18.3 above which confused me,
but gettext --version returns 0.18.3 for all of 0.18.3* :(
I.E. 0.18.3 and 0.18.3.2 are OK, but we can't distinguish
that using our bootstrap --version checks.

The best I can think of at present is to update
all major platforms away from the problematic 0.18.3.1
I've just done that for Fedora 20 here:
  https://admin.fedoraproject.org/updates/gettext-0.18.3.2-1.fc20
and logged the issue for Ubuntu here:
  http://pad.lv/1311895

thanks,
Pádraig.