Latest git sources fail to compile w/gnutls on debian stable

Latest git sources fail to compile w/gnutls on debian stable

[Harry Putnam]

My setup:
  Debian stable (jessie) running in vbox vm on windows 10 64bit

As a longtime user of gnus and emacs I compile from source
periodically.

Attempting to build latest emacs I run into a problem gnutls not being
available.  This is not a new problem for me.

I've had this failure for good few months but was able to compile
--with-gnutls=no and still have gnus work on nntp (mostly gmane)
imap (some on google some on fastmail.fm).  Seems to find a way to negotiate with imap servers
using gnutls-cli.... that is without any thing special done. 

However doing that (compiling --with-gnutls=no) this time and I find I
cannot access the imap groups .. some on google and some on fastmail.fm

So, on latest sources:

  ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/src/vcs/git/test --with-x=yes
       --with-x-toolkit=athena  --with-imagemagick
           --with-gpm --with-sound=no
  [...]
  
  configure: error: The following required libraries were not found:
      gnutls
  Maybe some development libraries/packages are missing?
  If you don't want to link with them give
     --with-gnutls=no
  as options to configure

I have these gnutls related pkgs installed:

  i A libcurl3-gnutls       - easy-to-use client-side URL transfer libra
  i   libgnutls-deb0-28     - GNU TLS library - main runtime library    
  i   libgnutls-openssl27   - GNU TLS library - OpenSSL wrapper         
  i A libneon27-gnutls      - HTTP and WebDAV client library (GnuTLS ena

I suspect it might be the dev pkgs that is needed:

  libgnutls-dev

But when I try to install it, I run into a complicated dependency
problem I don't know how to solve:

  aptitude install libgnutls-dev

  The following NEW packages will be installed:
    libgcrypt11{a} libgcrypt11-dev{ab} libgcrypt20-dev{a} libgnutls-dev{b} 
    libgnutls26{a} libgnutlsxx27{a} libgpg-error-dev{a} libp11-kit-dev{a} 
    libtasn1-3{a} libtasn1-3-dev{a} 
  0 packages upgraded, 10 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
  Need to get 2,990 kB of archives. After unpacking 7,831 kB will be used.
  The following packages have unmet dependencies:
   libgnutls-dev : Depends: libgnutls-openssl27 (= 2.12.20-8+deb7u5) but 3.3.8-6+deb8u4 is installed.
   libgcrypt11-dev : Breaks: libgnutls-dev (< 2.12.23-18) but 2.12.20-8+deb7u5 is to be installed.
  The following actions will resolve these dependencies:

       Keep the following packages at their current version:
  1)     libgnutls-dev [Not Installed]                      

  Accept this solution? [Y/n/q/?]

The offered solution ends with libngutls-dev NOT installed.

I walked thru several other solutions by pressing `. <ENTER>'

But none of the first 6 offer a way to end up with libgnutls-dev
installed.  I quite after 6 offerings.

I'm not even sure that is the missing pkg to allow emacs to compile
with gnutls...

I'm not really eager to meddle with my OS... I'm running stable for a
reason. 

I considered compiling gnutls from source and started into doing that,
but decided that was a good bit more complicated and  out of my skill range.

Hopefully someone here will have experience compiling emacs with gnutls
and will know or have a good idea what needs to be done here.

Re: Latest git sources fail to compile w/gnutls on debian stable

[Paul Eggert]

To be honest I'm not sure I would mess with this stuff if you're not an expert. 
I.e., if you want to run more-bleeding-edge software, by far the easiest way to 
do that is to upgrade to a more-bleeding-edge version of Debian.

That being said, the Debian package list doesn't list any "libgnutls-dev" 
package for jessie, which is the current Debian stable. That is, 
https://packages.debian.org/jessie/libgnutls-dev reports an error. If you are 
getting libgnutls-dev from some source other than Debian, that might explain the 
problem - but then, this would not match your desire to run a stable version, so 
I am puzzled as to what your system's state is. You might want to audit 
/etc/apt/sources.list before proceeding.

>    libgnutls-dev : Depends: libgnutls-openssl27 (= 2.12.20-8+deb7u5) but 3.3.8-6+deb8u4 is installed.

jessie's libgnutls-openssl27 is indeed 3.3.8-6+deb8u4 currently; at least, 
that's what https://packages.debian.org/jessie/libgnutls-openssl27 says. 
2.12.20-8+deb7u5 is for wheezy, which is the obsolete stable release. Perhaps 
you installed some wheezy packages atop a jessie system a while ago? or are 
trying to do the reverse? I'm not sure I'd recommend that....

Re: Latest git sources fail to compile w/gnutls on debian stable

[Harry Putnam]

Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> writes:

> To be honest I'm not sure I would mess with this stuff if you're not
> an expert. I.e., if you want to run more-bleeding-edge software, by
> far the easiest way to do that is to upgrade to a more-bleeding-edge
> version of Debian.

No doubt wise.

I've compiled emacs periodically for probably something like 10 yrs
and have always been able to to get it done... sometimes with help
here or gmane.emacs.help.  I guess its become a habit.

Its only this latest version that will not fetch imap groups when
compiled with --with-gnutls=no earlier versions of 26 did so ok.

When it was working I would see something about gnutls-cli when
fetching imap groups.  But this latest version is not able to do that
apparently and does not fetch imap when compiled --with-gnutls=no

> That being said, the Debian package list doesn't list any
> "libgnutls-dev" package for jessie, which is the current Debian
> stable. That is, https://packages.debian.org/jessie/libgnutls-dev
> reports an error. If you are getting libgnutls-dev from some source
> other than Debian, that might explain the problem - but then, this
> would not match your desire to run a stable version, so I am puzzled
> as to what your system's state is. You might want to audit
> /etc/apt/sources.list before proceeding.
>
>>    libgnutls-dev : Depends: libgnutls-openssl27 (= 2.12.20-8+deb7u5) but 3.3.8-6+deb8u4 is installed.

Aha... I see.

> jessie's libgnutls-openssl27 is indeed 3.3.8-6+deb8u4 currently; at
> least, that's what
> https://packages.debian.org/jessie/libgnutls-openssl27
> says. 2.12.20-8+deb7u5 is for wheezy, which is the obsolete stable
> release. Perhaps you installed some wheezy packages atop a jessie
> system a while ago? or are trying to do the reverse? I'm not sure I'd
> recommend that....



I had wheezy on sources list to get encfs which is considered broken
since wheezy.. And so not available on jessie, Apparently wheezy has
been on sources.list ever since... some months now.  No telling how
badly I've mangled my nice stable install.

(This is the first time I've tried to keep my debian OS on
stable... always used testing until a few months ago)

First off, removed the `wheezy' entries from sources.list.

I first thought to `aptitude remove' any offending wheezy packages ...
but after I thought a bit, I'm pretty sure that would end in some kind of
tragedy

Finally, with wheezy removed .. and aptitude update completed I tried
aptitude install gnutls to see what would be dredged up.

That led to libgnutls28-dev... once I installed that the compile
worked just fine.

I guess when I saw the gnutls-dev wheezy package.. saying `dev' I
didn't notice ... libgnutls28-dev

Thanks for doing the work and pointing out the problem.