Building dpkg on RH7.3

Hi,

This may be a make version or patch level issue, since dpkg must be building on some systems, but I grabbed the dpkg-1.10.10 from the unstable package listing on the debian web site to try and build it on a RedHat 7.3 system. The build process failed with this error:

make[2]: Entering directory `/home/users/jacob/dpkg-1.10.10/main'

make[2]: *** No rule to make target `archtable', needed by `archtable.h'. Stop.

Looking closer, it seems my make program isn’t expanding $(top_srcdir) properly. I don’t know if it is suppose to be expanding it differently, or if the variable should be named differently. Info make mentions underscores as being ok, so is this a RH make build bug? I only ask here first because I’ve compiled many programs on this system, and this is the first time I’ve seen this issue.

Here is what happens:

main/Makefile:

srcdir = .

top_srcdir = ..

Echoing the value of $(top_srcdir) I get ‘.’.

When I change top_srcdir to topsrcdir everywhere in that Makefile, $(topsrcdir) returns ‘..’.

This seems slightly similar to bug# 161803, but not exactly the same.

Here is the info from my make program:

[jacob@q2 dpkg-1.10.10]$ make --version

GNU Make version 3.79.1, by Richard Stallman and Roland McGrath.

Built for i386-redhat-linux-gnu

Free Software Foundation, Inc.

This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.

There is NO warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A

PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

Report bugs to <bug-make@gnu.org>.

Rpm package version info:

make-3.79.1-8

Name : make Relocations: /usr

Version : 3.79.1 Vendor: Red Hat, Inc.

Release : 8 Build Date: Fri 06 Jul 2001 03:03:46 PM MDT

I’m not on the lists, so please Cc responses to me.

Jacob Anawalt

jacob@cachevalley.com