[Libguestfs] Makefile probably incorrect

[Ezequiel Santos]

>
> Why is the package being built from git?  The tarballs contain all the
> files needed, and rpcgen isn't needed when building from the tarball.
>
> Rich.
>
Well, that's up to the package maintainer, he must not know about the
tarballs either. I just wanted to use to software and it is not in
Manjaro's official repository, so I went for the AUR.

Anyways, I succeeded in compiling it by installing  *ruby-rdoc* and *ruby-rake,
*which eliminated the following compiler errors. However, in the case of
ruby-rake the errors give little to no evidence as to what is missing.
I personally have no business (usually) with compiling stuff from source
and should actually thank you lads for the software you made available for
the community. Still I think your GitHub and libguestfs page (
http://libguestfs.org/guestfs-building.1.html) should use of some
improvement. There's no denying there's information missing in both. The
GitHub page doesn't tell us anything at all either about building from
tarballs or the likes, it just points to the building guide above, *which
in turn* doesn't mention anything about preferring the tarballs or them
being complete, so one just assumes it is ok to compile from git, which is
the case for most open-source software.  Yet the instructions to compile
from git don't mention it's mandatory to have these dependencies installed.

If those were only mentioned, people will avoid spending hours of
investigation as to why it doesn't compile when all the dependencies are
supposedly met.

Anyways, thanks for the attention and support, I'll communicate the package
maintainer of the tarballs and the why he should be using it instead.


Em ter., 7 de jul. de 2020 às 05:11, Richard W.M. Jones <rjones at redhat.com>
escreveu:

> On Mon, Jul 06, 2020 at 07:52:42PM -0300, Ezequiel Santos wrote:
> > Actually, I was trying to compile it from the AUR repository (
> > https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/libguestfs-git/) when I came across
> this
> > problem.
> > Now, answering your question:
> > *1. Are there any files under common/ ?*
> > Yes. There are several files there in, including Makefile.am,
> > guestfs_protocol.x, but not guestfs_protocol.c or guestfs_protocol.h
> >
> > However, I was talking to the package maintainer and he's stated that
> >
> > > rpcgen is used to create the files that are missed in your builds:
> > >
> > > $ grep -n rpcgen makepkg.out
> > > 3426:checking for rpcgen... rpcgen
> > > 4712:checking for rpcgen... rpcgen
> > > 5409:rpcgen -c -o guestfs_protocol.c-t guestfs_protocol.x
> > > 5410:rpcgen -h -o guestfs_protocol.h-t guestfs_protocol.x
> > > 5749:rpcgen -h -o rc_protocol.h-t rc_protocol.x
> > > 5750:rpcgen -c -o rc_protocol.c-t rc_protocol.x
> > >
> > > So I think the solution would be to add *rpcsvc-proto* (provider of
> > > rpcgen) to makedepends. On feedback that it works I'll make this
> update.
> > >
> >
> >  I installed *rpcsvc-proto *and indeed it created the missing files
> > (including the .c and .h file mentioned above) and it eliminated that
> > compiler error (just now I got a different one, which I'll try solving
> > later),
> >
> > However, it is of my concern that, as the maintainer of that package
> > mentioned:
> >
> > > This is a bit messy:
> > >
> > >    1. error should have been triggered at configure stage when rpcgen
> was
> > >    not found, rather than at compile stage.
> > >    2. http://libguestfs.org/guestfs-building.1.html does mention in
> > >    section *Full list of requirements* that *The rpcgen tool is
> optional,
> > >    except if you want to compile from git*. However, there is section
> *BUILDING
> > >    FROM GIT* which also lists specific dependencies, but not rpcgen; so
> > >    if you are directly looking for git build instructions, *you'll miss
> > >    it. *
> > >
> > > I personally tried agree with him, because I tried to find info on how
> to
> > properly compile this and although I didn't try manually fetching the
> code
> > from git, I could find enough information to solve this problem and thus
> I
> > think *there is *something to be fixed upstream, even if it's just
> > documentation.
>
> Why is the package being built from git?  The tarballs contain all the
> files needed, and rpcgen isn't needed when building from the tarball.
>
> Rich.
>
> --
> Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat
> http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
> Read my programming and virtualization blog: http://rwmj.wordpress.com
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>
>
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