Re: Build failure on Debian unstable

[Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org>]

Chong Yidong wrote:

> From reading the bug report, it seems that many software packages,
> including the Sendmail and Postfix mail transport agents, do the same
> thing.  So this should not be urgent enough to block the Emacs 22.1
> release.

Perhaps Debian will revert this problematic change. For now, we could
add a PROBLEMS entry about it. I know the version number could be
worked out more elegantly, I tried to find a portable way. Maybe there
is a better way.


*** Compiling on a GNU/Linux system fails with a missing left operand in gnu-linux.h

The actual error messages have the form:

  ../src/s/gnu-linux.h:49:24: error: operator '>' has no left operand

This error occurs because your system defines LINUX_VERSION_CODE in
the standard header file linux/version.h but does not give it a value.
As a workaround, you can edit the file src/s/gnu-linux.h to add the
needed definition.  On the line after "#include <linux/version.h>",
add a line as shown below:

#include <linux/version.h>
#define LINUX_VERSION_CODE 132626

The number to use depends on your kernel version (the example shown
is for kernel 2.6.18).  The number can be obtained by running this
command in the shell:

uname -r | sed -e 's/\./ /g' -e 's/-.*//' | awk '{print $1*(2^16) + $2*(2^8) + $3}'