Re: Build from source continues to be broken

Julian Foad <julianfoad_at_btopenworld.com>:
> Eric S. Raymond wrote:
>
> > autogen/configure/make transcript attached. Envronment is a stock Ubuntu
> > system.
>
> I tried to reproduce this, and succeeded.  I'm on Ubuntu 11.10; you?

12.10
 
> It's failing on
> the APR build; what version of APR source do you have here?  I guess a dev snapshot from the '1.3.x' branch, since your 'configure' reports the APR and APR-UTIL versions as 1.3.13, which are not released versions.

I have whatever I get from the wget recommended in the instructions printed
by configure.

> So that makes me want to go
>
> (cd apr/ && ./buildconf && ./configure)
>
> whereupon APR configures itself with its own copy of libtool, placed in path "" relative to its own root.

But this doesn't work as a recovery step. What would?

> I think the solution is, if you want to drop a source tree inside Subversion's like this, you have to use a tarball of APR (and of APR-UTIL) that is packaged with the 'configure' script already built, and not a development checkout of APR.  Alternatively, to use a development checkout of APR, build and install it separately and the point Subversion at the installed result of it.

I don't have any particular desire to do either of these things. What I want
is for the build instructions to be clear about what I have to do, and for the
build to succeed when I do it. Right now neither of those things is the case.
 
> Of course we (and APR) should be able to improve the diagnostics, and/or make it work.

Best would be if the configure script knew how to install these
components correctly and just did it, bothering me only when it
detects a failure.

-- 
		Eric S. Raymond