[Libguestfs] Strange libtool problem

[Jim Meyering]

Richard W.M. Jones wrote:

> On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 03:52:02PM +0200, Jim Meyering wrote:
>> Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
>> > On Thu, May 12, 2011 at 11:17:23AM +0100, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
>> >> On Sat, Apr 09, 2011 at 05:11:34PM +0100, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
>> >> > I'm not sure if this is related to me updating to gcc 4.6.0 or not,
>> >> > but in the gnulib/lib directory I get an error which comes down to the
>> >> > following libtool command running:
>> >> >
>> >> > $ ../../libtool --tag=CC --mode=compile gcc -std=gnu99 -std=gnu99
>> >> > -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I../.. -g -O2 -MT c-ctype.lo -MD -MP -MF
>> >> > .deps/c-ctype.Tpo -c -o c-ctype.lo c-ctype.c
>> >> > ../../libtool: line 2075: c-ctype.c: command not found
>> >> > libtool: compile: gcc -std=gnu99 -std=gnu99 -DHAVE_CONFIG_H
>> >> > -I. -I../.. -g -O2 -MT c-ctype.lo -MD -MP -MF .deps/c-ctype.Tpo -c
>> >> > "" -fPIC -DPIC -o .libs/c-ctype.o
>> >> > gcc: error: : No such file or directory
>> >> > gcc: fatal error: no input files
>> >> > compilation terminated.
>> >> >
>> >> > Note how the -c option is converted to -c "".  Also the error
>> >> > "c-ctype.c: command not found" which comes from a function very deep
>> >> > in libtool which is called from all over the place.
>> >> >
>> >> > I've tried recreating libtool, but to no effect.
>> >>
>> >> I'm still getting this problem, now with hivex.  It seems to be that
>> >> libtool is broken.
>> >
>> > I pushed this workaround:
>> >
>> > http://git.annexia.org/?p=hivex.git;a=commitdiff;h=27c45a5a1e5527f46894361794a1da588086fe0e
>> >
>> > It's obviously not a real fix, but works for me.
>>
>> Nice.
>> Do you know if it's still present when using the latest upstream
>> version of libtool?
>
> Not tried.  I'm using the very latest from Rawhide though
> which is libtool-2.4-4.fc15.x86_64.
>
> Is there an easy way to use libtool w/o installing it?

Sure.  Run this script and it'll build and install the
required tools in a private directory:

    http://people.redhat.com/meyering/autotools-install

I usually invoke it as recommended in --help output:

    autotools-install --prefix=$HOME/autotools --skip-check

That will install unmodified libtool-2.4.
If putting that bin/ directory early in your path doesn't solve it,
you could then build from libtool.git and install into that same
prefix to try the very latest.