Hi Adrian, I've been doing some Bug of the Day triage and picked up this one. I've prepared a debdiff fixing the FTCBFS issue.
The root cause is that the four explicit ../configure invocations in debian/rules do not pass --host or --build. Since architecture.mk is already included at the top of debian/rules, the DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE and DEB_BUILD_GNU_TYPE variables are already available â they just aren't being forwarded to configure. Helmut's 2016 suggestion was to switch to dh_auto_configure, but that isn't straightforward given the multi-build-dir layout (obj-db, obj-sqlite, obj-tokyocabinet, obj-doc each run separate configure invocations). The fix is to add --host and --build explicitly to each call. I've verified the fix at the configure level: without --host, autoconf determines cross_compiling=no and locks in the native toolchain. With --host=$(DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE), it correctly sets cross_compiling=yes and targets the declared host architecture. The package builds cleanly with the patch applied (lintian: one pre-existing warning, national-encoding in the French FAQ â not introduced by this change). The debdiff (1.2.5-1 â 1.2.5-1.1) is inlined below. If you'd prefer to apply the fix yourself and upload, that's great â please feel free to use this debdiff. If not, I'd like to arrange an NMU to DELAYED/10 via a sponsor (I'm a new contributor and don't have upload rights yet). Either way, this bug has been open for nearly a decade and CrossQA still shows failures â would be good to get it closed. I'm also noting a separate issue for a follow-up: debian/watch is broken (the http://sf.net/bogofilter/ URL pattern no longer matches â upstream files are now at sourceforge.net/projects/bogofilter/files/bogofilter-stable/ in .tar.xz format). Happy to file a separate bug for that if useful. Regards, James Montgomery --- debdiff bogofilter 1.2.5-1 â 1.2.5-1.1 --- diff -Nru bogofilter-1.2.5/debian/changelog bogofilter-1.2.5/debian/changelog --- bogofilter-1.2.5/debian/changelog 2021-02-10 10:00:56.000000000 +0000 +++ bogofilter-1.2.5/debian/changelog 2026-05-04 23:24:55.000000000 +0000 @@ -1,3 +1,11 @@ +bogofilter (1.2.5-1.1) unstable; urgency=low + + * Non-maintainer upload. + * Fix FTCBFS: add --host and --build flags to all configure invocations. + (Closes: #837877) + + -- James Montgomery <[email protected]> Mon, 04 May 2026 23:24:55 +0000 + bogofilter (1.2.5-1) unstable; urgency=high * New upstream release. (Closes: #980328) diff -Nru bogofilter-1.2.5/debian/rules bogofilter-1.2.5/debian/rules --- bogofilter-1.2.5/debian/rules 2018-03-09 19:30:06.000000000 +0000 +++ bogofilter-1.2.5/debian/rules 2026-05-04 23:24:55.000000000 +0000 @@ -19,12 +19,15 @@ override_dh_auto_configure: mkdir -p $(CURDIR)/obj-doc - cd $(CURDIR)/obj-doc && ../configure + cd $(CURDIR)/obj-doc && ../configure \ + --host=$(DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE) --build=$(DEB_BUILD_GNU_TYPE) mkdir $(CURDIR)/obj-db $(CURDIR)/obj-sqlite cd $(CURDIR)/obj-db && ../configure --with-database=db \ + --host=$(DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE) --build=$(DEB_BUILD_GNU_TYPE) \ --prefix=/usr --mandir=\$${prefix}/share/man --sysconfdir=/etc \ AWK=awk $(shell dpkg-buildflags --export=configure) cd $(CURDIR)/obj-sqlite && ../configure --with-database=sqlite \ + --host=$(DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE) --build=$(DEB_BUILD_GNU_TYPE) \ --program-suffix=-sqlite --prefix=/usr --mandir=\$${prefix}/share/man \ --sysconfdir=/etc AWK=awk $(shell dpkg-buildflags --export=configure) && \ sed -i 's/^INTEGRITY_TESTS.*/INTEGRITY_TESTS=t.lock1/' src/tests/Makefile @@ -32,6 +35,7 @@ mkdir $(CURDIR)/obj-tokyocabinet; \ cd $(CURDIR)/obj-tokyocabinet && ../configure \ --with-database=tokyocabinet --program-suffix=-tokyocabinet \ + --host=$(DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE) --build=$(DEB_BUILD_GNU_TYPE) \ --prefix=/usr --mandir=\$${prefix}/share/man --sysconfdir=/etc AWK=awk \ $(shell dpkg-buildflags --export=configure); \ fi
