Re: Running bootstrap script fails on Debian unstable

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

Hi Mihai!

On Mon, 2023-02-20 at 15:01 +0100, Mihai Moldovan wrote:
> * 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?

No. I am using a clean Debian unstable environment created with schroot with the
necessary build dependencies installed to perform a manual build.

> 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?

I'm performing a manual, local build.

> 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.

Well, autoconf was changed in incompatible ways with version 2.70 and I assume 
that
this is the problem. See for example [1].

Adrian

> [1] https://lwn.net/Articles/839395/

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