rpms/monodoc/devel monodoc.spec,1.3,1.4

[Ralf Corsepius]

Paul,

I had a look into monodoc's configuration ...

.. You are facing several bugs interacting

1. %configure .. passes --target=noarch-redhat-linux
This is an invalid canonicalization triple, causing AC_CANONICAL_SYSTEM
(actually config.sub) to abort => bug in RPM.


--target=sparc86x is a canonicalization triple which happens to let
config.sub silently accept it by random accident, and therefore doesn't
cause configure to abort, i.e. this is an ugly hack.

A better ugly hack to achieve the same effect would be --target=none


2. This package's configure.in uses AC_CANONICAL_SYSTEM.

AC_CANONICAL_SYSTEM adds --build, --host and --target to a configure
script, were --target is the target a cross-tool running on $host being
built on $build is supposed to generate code for.

This normally is only useful for cross-compilers and their components,
but isn't useful for normal applications. In this case it is not useful.

The whole configuration only applies $host, i.e. the configure script
wants AC_CANONICAL_HOST, not AC_CANONICAL_SYSTEM nor
AC_CANONICAL_TARGET.


I.e. the ultimate fix would be to let upstream replace this
AC_CANONICAL_SYSTEM with AC_CANONICAL_HOST. Afterwards, the rpm bug
should not have any effect, anymore.

As a minimal invasive short-term work-around, without having to patch
the packages and to run the autotools, two approaches are possible:
a) Don't use %configure, instead explicitly invoke ./configure with
appropriate options (and --target removed).

AFAIS, the packages only uses --prefix and --bindir, so most of the
other options %configure passes to ./configure are unused, anyway, so 

./configure --prefix=%{_prefix} --bindir=%{_bindir}
probably would be sufficient.

b) Use this (and don't patch configure*):
%configure --target=none


For the moment, I'd recommend you to remove all traces of patching
config-files and invoking the autotools and to use b).

Ralf