Bug#978370: lgeneral: FTBFS: configure:5729: error: possibly undefined macro: AM_INTL_SUBDIR (caused by gettext 0.19 -> 0.21?)

[Lucas Nussbaum]

Source: lgeneral
Version: 1.4.3-1
Severity: serious
Justification: FTBFS on amd64
Tags: bullseye sid ftbfs
Usertags: ftbfs-20201226 ftbfs-bullseye

Hi,

During a rebuild of all packages in sid, your package failed to build
on amd64.

Relevant part (hopefully):
>  debian/rules build
> dh build
>    dh_update_autotools_config
>    dh_autoreconf
> aclocal: warning: autoconf input should be named 'configure.ac', not 'configure.in'
> ERROR: Use of AM_GNU_GETTEXT without [external] argument is no longer supported.
> configure.in:6: warning: AC_ARG_PROGRAM was called before AC_CANONICAL_TARGET
> ../../lib/autoconf/general.m4:1844: AC_CANONICAL_TARGET is expanded from...
> configure.in:6: the top level
> configure.in:41: warning: AM_INTL_SUBDIR is m4_require'd but not m4_defun'd
> /usr/share/aclocal/gettext.m4:55: AM_GNU_GETTEXT is expanded from...
> configure.in:41: the top level
> ERROR: Use of AM_GNU_GETTEXT without [external] argument is no longer supported.
> configure.in:6: warning: AC_ARG_PROGRAM was called before AC_CANONICAL_TARGET
> ../../lib/autoconf/general.m4:1844: AC_CANONICAL_TARGET is expanded from...
> configure.in:6: the top level
> configure.in:41: warning: AM_INTL_SUBDIR is m4_require'd but not m4_defun'd
> aclocal.m4:77: AM_GNU_GETTEXT is expanded from...
> configure.in:41: the top level
> autoreconf: configure.in: AM_GNU_GETTEXT is used, but not AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION
> ERROR: Use of AM_GNU_GETTEXT without [external] argument is no longer supported.
> configure.in:6: warning: AC_ARG_PROGRAM was called before AC_CANONICAL_TARGET
> ../../lib/autoconf/general.m4:1844: AC_CANONICAL_TARGET is expanded from...
> configure.in:6: the top level
> configure.in:41: warning: AM_INTL_SUBDIR is m4_require'd but not m4_defun'd
> aclocal.m4:77: AM_GNU_GETTEXT is expanded from...
> configure.in:41: the top level
> configure:5729: error: possibly undefined macro: AM_INTL_SUBDIR
>       If this token and others are legitimate, please use m4_pattern_allow.
>       See the Autoconf documentation.
> autoreconf: /usr/bin/autoconf failed with exit status: 1
> dh_autoreconf: error: autoreconf -f -i returned exit code 1
> make: *** [debian/rules:8: build] Error 25

The full build log is available from:
   http://qa-logs.debian.net/2020/12/26/lgeneral_1.4.3-1_unstable.log

A list of current common problems and possible solutions is available at
http://wiki.debian.org/qa.debian.org/FTBFS . You're welcome to contribute!

If you reassign this bug to another package, please marking it as 'affects'-ing
this package. See https://www.debian.org/Bugs/server-control#affects

If you fail to reproduce this, please provide a build log and diff it with me
so that we can identify if something relevant changed in the meantime.

About the archive rebuild: The rebuild was done on EC2 VM instances from
Amazon Web Services, using a clean, minimal and up-to-date chroot. Every
failed build was retried once to eliminate random failures.