Re: Running bootstrap script fails on Debian unstable

[Glenn Washburn]

Hi Adrian,

On Mon, 20 Feb 2023 15:26:35 +0100
John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de> wrote:

> 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].

Does the 2.06 release build with the new autoconf? It looks like sid is
using 2.06, I don't see any special patches for configure.ac, and I
presume that the sid grub binary is built with the new autoconf. If
this all is true, then I'd guess some of the recent configure.ac
changes may have something to do with it.

Glenn

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