Bug 3520 - autoreconf is overkill for a fresh checkout
Summary: autoreconf is overkill for a fresh checkout
Status: CLOSED WORKSFORME
Alias: None
Product: Portable OpenSSH
Classification: Unclassified
Component: Build system (show other bugs)
Version: 9.1p1
Hardware: All All
: P5 trivial
Assignee: Assigned to nobody
URL:
Keywords:
Depends on:
Blocks:
 
Reported: 2023-01-13 13:46 AEDT by Clarence "Sparr" Risher
Modified: 2023-03-17 13:42 AEDT (History)
2 users (show)

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Description Clarence "Sparr" Risher 2023-01-13 13:46:22 AEDT
This may not be worth worrying about, but it may also be useful to add as a note in INSTALL. After a fresh git checkout, I am able to compile after `aclocal && autoconf`, which is a subset of what `autoreconf` does and requires fewer additional tools to be available.
Comment 1 Clarence "Sparr" Risher 2023-01-13 13:47:55 AEDT
I may have spoken too soon. I did some other processes while troubleshooting another problem and may have manually run one or more of the other autoreconf steps outside of my efforts here.
Comment 2 Darren Tucker 2023-01-13 14:35:22 AEDT
(In reply to Clarence "Sparr" Risher from comment #0)
> This may not be worth worrying about, but it may also be useful to
> add as a note in INSTALL. After a fresh git checkout, I am able to
> compile after `aclocal && autoconf`, which is a subset of what
> `autoreconf` does and requires fewer additional tools to be
> available.

That's not sufficient, you also need "autoheader":

$ git clone https://github.com/openssh/openssh-portable && cd openssh-portable && aclocal && autoconf && ./configure
[...]
config.status: error: cannot find input file: `config.h.in'

$ autoheader && ./configure && make
[...]
$ ./ssh -V
OpenSSH_9.1p1, OpenSSL 3.0.5 5 Jul 2022

but given that this only impacts people building the development versions, and that it's possible to do the autoconf prep on a machine other than the build target (that's what our VM-based tests do since it keeps the prereqs on the VMs to a minimum) I'd rather specify the thing that guaranteed to do all of the needful even if that means you may have to install another package or two on the development machine.
Comment 3 Sam James 2023-01-13 22:59:03 AEDT
This seems like premature optimisation anyway. It also depends on future changes to the build system and then someone may well forget to update INSTALL.
Comment 4 Darren Tucker 2023-01-13 23:48:55 AEDT
(In reply to Sam James from comment #3)
> This seems like premature optimisation anyway. It also depends on
> future changes to the build system and then someone may well forget
> to update INSTALL.

Agreed, I'm happy with the existing instructions.

Clarence: thanks  for the report, but we don't plan on changing this.
Comment 5 Damien Miller 2023-03-17 13:42:43 AEDT
OpenSSH 9.3 has been released. Close resolved bugs