Re: Really strange : my package doesn't compile from source.

["Neil L. Roeth" <neil@occamsrazor.net>]

I am having a similar problem right now, and I was going to "solve" it by
adding automake to the build dependencies.

I had to run automake on my source tree, and after uploading the changed
package, it FTBFS on some architectures, but not all.  Examining the buildd
logs showed it tried to run automake to build Makefile.in, which has a make
dependency on Makefile.am and aclocal.m4.  It failed to find automake and
died.  The simple solution is to add automake to the build dependencies, which
you say should not be done.

But, *why* did this happen?  I had created Makefile.in in the source tree
after aclocal.m4, so it was a *newer* file there and did not trigger a call to
automake on my build machine.  However, the buildd make somehow thought the
Makefile.in was *older* than aclocal.m4, so it did trigger a call to automake
and failed when it could not find it.  Perhaps the problem is that both
aclocal.m4 and Makefile.in are unpacked from the source package in the order
that they appear in the .diff.gz file; Makefile.in is in the .diff.gz first,
followed by aclocal.m4.  So the time ordering was reversed after the files
were created by patching .orig.tar.gz with .diff.gz, and automake got invoked
needlessly.  That's my theory, feel free to point out any stunningly obvious
facts that I overlooked which make it invalid :-)

What this does not explain is why it did not FTBFS on all architectures.  I
searched through one or two other logs of successful builds and did not see
any calls to automake, so somehow the dependency did not trigger.  Also, a
build with pbuilder on my machine, i.e., a clean environment, had no problem.

Unless you or someone else can tell me what is going on, and a better way to
fix it, I am inclined to go ahead and include automake in the build
dependencies.

For reference, the buildd logs are here:

http://buildd.debian.org/build.php?arch=&pkg=aplus-fsf

and it is the -4 packages for which the above occurred.

On Mar 12, Eric Dorland (eric@debian.org) wrote:
 > As automake maintainer I'd just like to point out that build-depending
 > on automake1.6 (any automake for that matter) is bad! Run automake on
 > your source tree and ship the changed files in the diff.gz.
 > 
 > * Jean-Michel Kelbert (kelbert@debian.org) wrote:
 > > Hi,
 > > 
 > > I recently upload to sid my new package : k3b. But I have forget to add
 > > automake1.6 in Build-Depends. That's why I would like to made a new
 > > release. However, I didn't manage to compile k3b from source ! But if I
 > > apply the diff.gz patch to the upstream source. Then it works ! I didn't
 > > unterstand why ! I made a diff -Naur from the two directory, and the
 > > content is the same. Then I made a diff from the md5sum of each file in
 > > the directory, and it is also the same ! That's why I don't understand
 > > why it doesn't compile (with debuild) from the debian sources !
 > > 
 > > Thanks for your help.
 > > 
 > 
 > -- 
 > Eric Dorland <dorland@lords.com>
 > ICQ: #61138586, Jabber: hooty@jabber.com
 > 1024D/16D970C6 097C 4861 9934 27A0 8E1C  2B0A 61E9 8ECF 16D9 70C6
 > 
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-- 
Neil L. Roeth