Bug#989399: nauty FTCBFS -- multiple reasons

[Andrius Merkys]

Hi Nilesh,

On 2021-06-02 19:29, Nilesh Patra wrote:
> Nauty fails to cross build due to two reasons:
> 
> 1. It uses AC_RUN_IFELSE testing which cannot heppen during cross build
>    Simply replacing it by AC_LINK_IFELSE does the trick. Please find the
>    patch for this below, and consider applying

I have no experience with this, alas.

> 2. It uses help2man during build, and the same has also been
>    autotoolised - this isn't allowed during build. It looks like there's particularly
>    no good way to fix it, and probably compiling twice once for build
>    arch, and once for host is un-needed extra work.
>    I'd suggest removing the help2man invocations from autotools, not
>    generate this during build, but simply maintain maintainer manpage,
>    using for example createmanpages script[1]
>    Talking to upstream and asking them to vendor their own manpages from
>    next release can also be a nice option.
> 
>    If it is too much hassle for you, I'm willing to do so myself and
>    even maintain the package
> 
> [1]: https://salsa.debian.org/med-team/community/helper-scripts/-/blob/master/createmanpages

Indeed, help2man should not call the compiled executables. Nevertheless
it may still be used to produce manpages from static text, see [2] for
example. createmanpages is a viable option too.

[2]
https://salsa.debian.org/debian/libemf2svg/-/blob/df56bd1149cf512b6a232052437d04310bd90982/debian/rules#L11

Best,
Andrius