False and misleading information

“Needed” a new version of something, so build from source. Configure not available, because… autohell, so run “autogen.sh” instead.

karlp@nanopiduo2:~/src/libgpiod$ ./autogen.sh 
autoreconf: Entering directory `.'
autoreconf: configure.ac: not using Gettext
autoreconf: running: aclocal --force -I m4
aclocal: warning: couldn't open directory 'm4': No such file or directory
autoreconf: configure.ac: tracing
autoreconf: configure.ac: creating directory autostuff
autoreconf: configure.ac: not using Libtool
autoreconf: running: /usr/bin/autoconf --force
configure.ac:92: 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:172: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_LIBTOOL_CXX
configure.ac:174: error: Unexpanded AX_ macro found. Please install GNU autoconf-archive.
configure.ac:179: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_LANG_PUSH
configure.ac:181: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_LANG_POP
configure.ac:188: error: Unexpanded AX_ macro found. Please install GNU autoconf-archive.
autoreconf: /usr/bin/autoconf failed with exit status: 1
karlp@nanopiduo2:~/src/libgpiod$

Whatever, this is “traditional” that you can’t actually use autohell without adding more autohell from somewhere else, but ok, bend the knee, install autoconf-archive and continue….

karlp@nanopiduo2:~/src/libgpiod$ ./autogen.sh 
autoreconf: Entering directory `.'
autoreconf: configure.ac: not using Gettext
autoreconf: running: aclocal --force -I m4
aclocal: warning: couldn't open directory 'm4': No such file or directory
autoreconf: configure.ac: tracing
autoreconf: configure.ac: not using Libtool
autoreconf: running: /usr/bin/autoconf --force
configure.ac:92: 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:172: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_LIBTOOL_CXX
configure.ac:179: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_LANG_PUSH
configure.ac:181: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_LANG_POP
autoreconf: /usr/bin/autoconf failed with exit status: 1
karlp@nanopiduo2:~/src/libgpiod$

wat? really? that’s it? Thanks for nothing. Google and the accumulated wisdom of years of hate suggest that, as this is a “new” machine, I might not have installed pkg-config. (Given that the whole thing with autohell is finding things, you might think it could give you a better error?) ok, Install that, try again

karlp@nanopiduo2:~/src/libgpiod$ ./autogen.sh 
autoreconf: Entering directory `.'
autoreconf: configure.ac: not using Gettext
autoreconf: running: aclocal --force -I m4
aclocal: warning: couldn't open directory 'm4': No such file or directory
autoreconf: configure.ac: tracing
autoreconf: configure.ac: not using Libtool
autoreconf: running: /usr/bin/autoconf --force
configure.ac:172: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_LIBTOOL_CXX
      If this token and others are legitimate, please use m4_pattern_allow.
      See the Autoconf documentation.
autoreconf: /usr/bin/autoconf failed with exit status: 1
karlp@nanopiduo2:~/src/libgpiod$

Progress, but… still not there. Still absolutely atrociously useless error messages. Now, I’ve read the README, it says to install autoconf-archive, and that’s about it. I have python3-dev and libstdc++-9-dev I’m not sure what else now…

Oh right. libtool, another gross piece of historic nonsense, that mostly just gets in the way, and leaves pretend files around the place.

Now autogen will ~finish, and run configure, happily checking whether I’m running on a 30 year old unpatched sparc solaris, so it applies the right workarounds, but don’t worry…

configure: error: "libgpiod needs linux headers version >= v5.10.0"

I mean, I’m super glad we included all that “portable” autohell bullshit when we’re explicitly tied to linux anyway. And not just any linux. At the time of writing, 5.10.0 was three days old.

At this point, there are now _other_ problems that autotools, but this is just another example of why you should NEVER be using autotools in 2020.