[yocto] Make autotools use autogen.sh

[Patrick Doyle]

Hi Ross,
Thank you for answering.  As we've been digging into it here, we've found:
a) do_compile fails because make depends on INSTALL, because INSTALL
is listed in the aravis_DATA list in Makefile.am.
b) It appears (subject to further investigation) that autoreconf
--install doesn't create the INSTALL file because it is passed the
--foreign flag (whereas autogen.sh passes the --gnu flag to automake).

I'm going to continue poking around and see if there is some sort of
OE_USE_GNU_INSTEAD_OF_FOREIGN flag I can set in my recipe :-)  In the
mean time, I have established that I can override do_configure (for
this specific case) with:

do_configure() {
    NOCONFIGURE=true ./autogen.sh --enable-gst-plugin
    oe_runconf
}

The NOCONFIGURE=true is required because that's what upstream
autogen.sh checks to see whether it should run configure or not.

If I wanted to learn more about autogen.sh dying out, where would I
look?  I'd be happy to talk with the upstream maintainer about whether
he could eliminate this or not, but I'd like to know more myself
before starting that conversation.  However, I think there might still
be the issue with --foreign vs --gnu (assuming that is truly the root
cause of the missing INSTALL file).

--wpd



On Mon, Jul 14, 2014 at 10:25 AM, Burton, Ross <ross.burton at intel.com> wrote:
> On 14 July 2014 14:32, Patrick Doyle <wpdster at gmail.com> wrote:
>> What is the best thing to do here…
>> Should I inherit autotools and override do_configure with my own
>> version that just runs the (package supplied) autogen.sh?
>>
>> Is there a way for autotools to run automake --add-missing?
>
> So autotools.bbclass invokes autoreconf --install, which should be
> passed down as automake --add-missing.  If that isn't the case then
> that's arguably a bug in autoreconf.
>
> In general autogen.sh is dying now that autoconf has autoreconf, as
> your typical autogen.sh just runs the autoconf/automake/etc tools in
> the right order - and this is what autoreconf does.
>
>> Should I go figure out why the build fails in INSTALL doesn't exist?
>> (I'm going to start there, since my first two ideas haven't panned
>> out.  (Well, I haven't actually tried the first one yet, it just seems
>> silly to me to inherit autotools and then not use them.))
>
> I've no idea why a missing INSTALL file would cause a build error, or
> why you don't get it when autoreconf is executed.  Can you share some
> logs?
>
> Ross