On Tue, Jan 21, 2020 at 10:18 AM Zack Weinberg <zackw@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: > > The `aclocal` program (which is run by autoreconf) is supposed to > generate aclocal.m4, though. I strongly suspect the missing AC_INIT > is the problem here. Following up on this, if I run autoreconf -vif on Vincent's original configure.ac+Makefile.am+m4 directory (also with dummy NEWS README COPYING AUTHORS ChangeLog files), I get errors: $ autoreconf --version autoreconf (GNU Autoconf) 2.69 Copyright (C) 2012 Free Software Foundation, Inc. [etc] $ autoreconf -vif autoreconf: Entering directory `.' autoreconf: configure.ac: not using Autoconf autoreconf: Leaving directory `.' [autoreconf should probably exit unsuccessfully when that happens, but that's a side issue.] Individual autotools commands also fail: $ aclocal -I m4 configure.ac:8: error: AC_INIT should be called with package and version arguments /usr/share/aclocal-1.16/init.m4:29: AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE is expanded from... configure.ac:8: the top level autom4te: /usr/bin/m4 failed with exit status: 1 aclocal: error: echo failed with exit status: 1 (aclocal does exit unsuccessfully in this case, and aclocal.m4 is not created) $ automake --add-missing configure.ac:9: error: m4_defn: undefined macro: _AC_LANG ../../lib/autoconf/lang.m4:107: AC_LANG_POP is expanded from... ../../lib/autoconf/c.m4:448: AC_PROG_CC is expanded from... configure.ac:9: the top level autom4te: /usr/bin/m4 failed with exit status: 1 automake: error: autoconf failed with exit status: 1 (automake exits unsuccessfully and Makefile.in is not created) $ autoconf configure.ac:9: error: m4_defn: undefined macro: _AC_LANG ../../lib/autoconf/lang.m4:107: AC_LANG_POP is expanded from... ../../lib/autoconf/c.m4:448: AC_PROG_CC is expanded from... configure.ac:9: the top level autom4te: /usr/bin/m4 failed with exit status: 1 (autoconf exits unsuccessfully and configure is not created) If I make this change to configure.ac, on the other hand, autoreconf -vif completes successfully and the generated configure script runs fine: diff -u configure.ac.old configure.ac --- configure.ac.old 2020-01-21 10:31:26.816736978 -0500 +++ configure.ac 2020-01-21 10:31:34.536537740 -0500 @@ -1,8 +1,5 @@ AC_CONFIG_MACRO_DIRS([m4]) -m4_pattern_allow([AC_PROG_CC_C99]) -m4_include([m4/ax_check_compile_flag.m4]) -m4_include([m4/ax_cxx_compile_stdcxx.m4]) -m4_include([m4/ax_cxx_compile_stdcxx_11.m4]) +AC_INIT([demo],[1.0]) AC_CONFIG_SRCDIR(configure.ac) AM_CONFIG_HEADER(config.h) AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE So it appears to me that the whole problem really was the lack of an AC_INIT, and that explicit m4_include invocations are *not* necessary. (The warnings about use of obsolete macros AM_CONFIG_HEADER and AC_PROG_LIBTOOL should still be fixed, but that's much less important.) zw
