[Debian-med-packaging] Bug#933628: Trouble with autoconf (Was: Bug#933628: aevol FTCBFS: broken, oudated, embedded copy of AX_BOOST_BASE)

[Helmut Grohne]

Hi Andreas,

On Thu, Aug 01, 2019 at 11:14:05AM +0200, Andreas Tille wrote:
> I have removed m4/ax_boost* in Git[1].  Unfortunately this leaded to
> some configure errors.  I was able to work around
> 
>   1. error: possibly undefined macro: AC_MSG_ERROR
> 
>        by adding
> 
>      m4_pattern_allow([AC_MSG_ERROR])
> 
>        despite I'm quite sceptical about this error.  A websearch
>        uncovers several instances of this error with no pattern
>        that really applied here.  No idea whether there is a better
>        fix.

AC_MSG_ERROR was used in an argument of AX_BOOST_BASE. Could it possibly
be that AX_BOOST_BASE wasn't expanded and that this is a consequence?
I.e. red herring.

>   2. AX_BOOST_BASE([1.55],...) created syntax error in configure script
> 
>      Thus I simply removed all arguments since I assumed that no actual
>      version needs to be really checked since we have modern boost in
>      all relevant releases.  Unfortunately this endedt up in:

Could it be that you miss a build dependency on autoconf-archive here?

I attempted a cross build. It succeeded after adding autoconf-archive to
Build-Depends and adding m4/ax_boost_base.m4 (but not the others) to
debian/clean.

Helmut