Source: ncftp
Version: 2:3.2.5-2
Severity: serious
User: helm...@debian.org
Usertags: rebootstrap
I tried cross building ncftp and that didn't go particularly well. In
that process, I noticed that ncftp's configure is not regenerated from
configure.in at build time. The file says it is generated with
autoconf2.13, so I attempted using that. If you try that, you get the
following error from autoheader:
| /usr/bin/autoheader2.13: Symbol `PREFIX_BINDIR' is not covered by
/usr/share/autoconf2.13/acconfig.h
Then it gives up. So maybe I'm wrongly calling autoconf and should be
using sh/autoconfall.sh instead? That file doesn't quite work out of the
box, but after sufficient patching one notices that it produces the very
same error message and that it generally ignores all errors from
autoheader and autoconf (violates Debian policy section 4.6).
I conclude that if sh/autoconfall.sh is the way to regenerate configure,
then ncftp is rc buggy due to the policy violation and because it
generally doesn't work. Otherwise, a build artifact cannot be built from
source with tools in Debian and that violates[1] DFSG #3.
I am attaching my attempt at making sh/autoconfall.sh work in case
someone else tries that route. With the patch, the resulting configure
is severely broken, because macros from autoconf_local/*.m4 are not
interpolated. I haven't figured how to fix that yet.
This bug should be closed when there is a procedure that makes
reflecting changes to configure.in in configure feasible.
Helmut
[1] Technically, that item is only about the license. Clearly though,
the intention is to allow modification. If the source makes it
impractical to be modified, the freedom gained from this item is
lost.
