bug#47159: 28.0.50; gnutls not recognized in build process without pkg-config

bug#47159: 28.0.50; gnutls not recognized in build process without pkg-config

[Jean Louis]

Today I was switching from Hyperbola GNU/Linux-libre to Parabola
GNU/Linux-libre and some of first programs I wanted to build was
Emacs. I have not installed enough packages, but gnutls was installed.

Emacs' configure was complaining that gnutls cannot be found. But it was
there.

By chance I was thinkin that build process maybe uses pkg-config, so I
have installed pkg-config as package. The build process then continued
and could find gnutls.

In my opinion, there shall be a check for pkg-config if Emacs is using
such or requiring such to verify for existence of some software on the
system. It is misleading if it says it cannot find gnutls, but does not
say that pkg-config is missing which is supposed to detect the gnutls.



In GNU Emacs 28.0.50 (build 1, x86_64-pc-linux-gnu, X toolkit, cairo version 1.17.4, Xaw scroll bars)
 of 2021-03-15 built on protected.rcdrun.com
Repository revision: 5120b612f8520a855fc1819c3ebf86453c361e55
Repository branch: master
Windowing system distributor 'The X.Org Foundation', version 11.0.12010000
Configured using:
 'configure --with-x-toolkit=lucid'

Configured features:
ACL CAIRO DBUS FREETYPE GIF GLIB GMP GNUTLS GPM GSETTINGS HARFBUZZ JPEG
JSON LCMS2 LIBSYSTEMD LIBXML2 MODULES NOTIFY INOTIFY PDUMPER PNG RSVG
SOUND THREADS TIFF TOOLKIT_SCROLL_BARS X11 XDBE XIM XPM LUCID ZLIB

Important settings:
  value of $LC_ALL: en_US.UTF-8
  value of $LANG: de_DE.UTF-8
  value of $XMODIFIERS: @im=exwm-xim
  locale-coding-system: utf-8-unix

Major mode: Lisp Interaction

Minor modes in effect:
  shell-dirtrack-mode: t
  tooltip-mode: t
  global-eldoc-mode: t
  eldoc-mode: t
  electric-indent-mode: t
  mouse-wheel-mode: t
  tool-bar-mode: t
  menu-bar-mode: t
  file-name-shadow-mode: t
  global-font-lock-mode: t
  font-lock-mode: t
  blink-cursor-mode: t
  auto-composition-mode: t
  auto-encryption-mode: t
  auto-compression-mode: t
  line-number-mode: t
  transient-mark-mode: t

Load-path shadows:
None found.

Features:
(shadow sort mail-extr shell pcomplete comint ansi-color ring emacsbug
message rmc puny dired dired-loaddefs rfc822 mml mml-sec epa derived epg
epg-config gnus-util rmail rmail-loaddefs auth-source cl-seq eieio
eieio-core cl-macs eieio-loaddefs password-cache json map
text-property-search time-date subr-x seq byte-opt gv bytecomp
byte-compile cconv mm-decode mm-bodies mm-encode mail-parse rfc2231
mailabbrev gmm-utils mailheader cl-loaddefs cl-lib sendmail rfc2047
rfc2045 ietf-drums mm-util mail-prsvr mail-utils iso-transl tooltip
eldoc electric uniquify ediff-hook vc-hooks lisp-float-type mwheel
term/x-win x-win term/common-win x-dnd tool-bar dnd fontset image
regexp-opt fringe tabulated-list replace newcomment text-mode elisp-mode
lisp-mode prog-mode register page tab-bar menu-bar rfn-eshadow isearch
easymenu timer select scroll-bar mouse jit-lock font-lock syntax
facemenu font-core term/tty-colors frame minibuffer cl-generic cham
georgian utf-8-lang misc-lang vietnamese tibetan thai tai-viet lao
korean japanese eucjp-ms cp51932 hebrew greek romanian slovak czech
european ethiopic indian cyrillic chinese composite charscript charprop
case-table epa-hook jka-cmpr-hook help simple abbrev obarray
cl-preloaded nadvice button loaddefs faces cus-face macroexp files
window text-properties overlay sha1 md5 base64 format env code-pages
mule custom widget hashtable-print-readable backquote threads dbusbind
inotify lcms2 dynamic-setting system-font-setting font-render-setting
cairo x-toolkit x multi-tty make-network-process emacs)

Memory information:
((conses 16 56822 6744)
 (symbols 48 7505 1)
 (strings 32 21343 1938)
 (string-bytes 1 689068)
 (vectors 16 13811)
 (vector-slots 8 180271 10606)
 (floats 8 23 45)
 (intervals 56 227 0)
 (buffers 992 11))

-- 
Thanks,
Jean Louis
⎔ λ 🄯 𝍄 𝌡 𝌚

bug#47159: 28.0.50; gnutls not recognized in build process without pkg-config

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> writes:

> Emacs' configure was complaining that gnutls cannot be found. But it was
> there.
>
> By chance I was thinkin that build process maybe uses pkg-config, so I
> have installed pkg-config as package. The build process then continued
> and could find gnutls.

I can reproduce this on Debian/bullseye, too.  I removed pkg-config and
ran ./configure.  It says:

configure: error: The following required libraries were not found:
     libtiff gnutls
Maybe some development libraries/packages are missing?
To build anyway, give:
     --with-tiff=ifavailable --with-gnutls=ifavailable
as options to configure.

"sudo apt install pkg-config" and then ./configure
--with-tiff=ifavailable allowed me to build Emacs.

I can't see any explicit checks for pkg-config in configure.ac.

I'm wondering whether this is a packaging error.  Most of the other
devel packages depend on pkg-config, so it'll be pulled in automatically
(which is probably why this hasn't been an issue before).  But
gnutls-dev does not depend on pkg-config.

So I guess we should just add a check for pkg-config in the gnutls
check?  Any opinions?

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no

bug#47159: 28.0.50; gnutls not recognized in build process without pkg-config

[Jean Louis]

* Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> [2021-03-18 08:52]:
> So I guess we should just add a check for pkg-config in the gnutls
> check?  Any opinions?

My opinion as a non-expert in the subject of preparation of
`configure' script is that it should check for any fundamental command
required for building.

Developers may forget those very basic packages/software as they
rarely develop from a plain system. The discovery came about because I
have been installing Parabola GNU/Linux-libre and did not know what is
the main virtual package to install all the other building tools
packages, so I was installing one by one whatever was missing, like
`automake' or `gcc' or similar packages until the point that I could
compile it.

bug#47159: 28.0.50; gnutls not recognized in build process without pkg-config

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2021 13:59:13 +0300
> From: Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>
> Cc: 47159@debbugs.gnu.org
> 
> * Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> [2021-03-18 08:52]:
> > So I guess we should just add a check for pkg-config in the gnutls
> > check?  Any opinions?
> 
> My opinion as a non-expert in the subject of preparation of
> `configure' script is that it should check for any fundamental command
> required for building.

I agree, and we do.

> Developers may forget those very basic packages/software as they
> rarely develop from a plain system.

Please don't generalize what is basically a simple oversight to imply
that Emacs developers are incompetent: the test for pkg-config is
there, we just don't announce its failure to the user.

bug#47159: 28.0.50; gnutls not recognized in build process without pkg-config

[Jean Louis]

* Eli Zaretskii <eliz@gnu.org> [2021-03-18 14:25]:
> > Developers may forget those very basic packages/software as they
> > rarely develop from a plain system.
> 
> Please don't generalize what is basically a simple oversight to imply
> that Emacs developers are incompetent: the test for pkg-config is
> there, we just don't announce its failure to the user.

You know well how much I appreciate your work and others' work.

I am last person who would think "Emacs developers are incompetent" --
hey! 

Note the words "may forget those very basic packages" -- "may forget",
it is not meant as a rule. 

bug#47159: 28.0.50; gnutls not recognized in build process without pkg-config

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 19 Mar 2021 12:09:20 +0300
> From: Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support>
> Cc: larsi@gnus.org, 47159@debbugs.gnu.org
> 
> I am last person who would think "Emacs developers are incompetent" --
> hey! 
> 
> Note the words "may forget those very basic packages" -- "may forget",
> it is not meant as a rule. 

It is borderline rude to even hint on such a possibility, IMNSHO.

bug#47159: 28.0.50; gnutls not recognized in build process without pkg-config

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org>
> Date: Thu, 18 Mar 2021 06:52:16 +0100
> Cc: 47159@debbugs.gnu.org
> 
> So I guess we should just add a check for pkg-config in the gnutls
> check?  Any opinions?

I think the check is there already, we just don't expose the results
to the user, and instead claim that whatever feature we needed
pkg-config for is not available.  IOW, what is missing here is the
message saying pkg-config wasn't found, and therefore a test for
FEATURE couldn't be done.

bug#47159: 28.0.50; gnutls not recognized in build process without pkg-config

[Glenn Morris]

Lars Ingebrigtsen wrote:

> I can reproduce this on Debian/bullseye, too.  I removed pkg-config and
> ran ./configure.  It says:
>
> configure: error: The following required libraries were not found:
>      libtiff gnutls
> Maybe some development libraries/packages are missing?
> To build anyway, give:
>      --with-tiff=ifavailable --with-gnutls=ifavailable
> as options to configure.

And further up it will say:

   checking for pkg-config... no

> I can't see any explicit checks for pkg-config in configure.ac.

PKG_PROG_PKG_CONFIG(0.9.0)

Perhaps you want to check the result of that and make it fatal,
but only in some cases. Or perhaps users should read configure output.

bug#47159: 28.0.50; gnutls not recognized in build process without pkg-config

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org> writes:

>> I can't see any explicit checks for pkg-config in configure.ac.
>
> PKG_PROG_PKG_CONFIG(0.9.0)
>
> Perhaps you want to check the result of that and make it fatal,
> but only in some cases. Or perhaps users should read configure output.

Ah, thanks.  I've now added a warning about this just above the error
about the missing library, so that should help, and probably not lead to
too many false positives.

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no

bug#47159: 28.0.50; gnutls not recognized in build process without pkg-config

[Jean Louis]

* Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> [2021-03-19 11:00]:
> Glenn Morris <rgm@gnu.org> writes:
> 
> >> I can't see any explicit checks for pkg-config in configure.ac.
> >
> > PKG_PROG_PKG_CONFIG(0.9.0)
> >
> > Perhaps you want to check the result of that and make it fatal,
> > but only in some cases. Or perhaps users should read configure output.
> 
> Ah, thanks.  I've now added a warning about this just above the error
> about the missing library, so that should help, and probably not lead to
> too many false positives.

I have now done git pull and removed pkg-config from system
temporarily, this below is the message I got, even though I do have
gnutls in the system.

...
checking for pkg-config... no
...
checking for GifMakeMapObject in -lgif... yes
configure: error: The following required libraries were not found:
     gnutls
Maybe some development libraries/packages are missing?
To build anyway, give:
     --with-gnutls=ifavailable
as options to configure.

bug#47159: 28.0.50; gnutls not recognized in build process without pkg-config

[Lars Ingebrigtsen]

Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> writes:

> I have now done git pull and removed pkg-config from system
> temporarily, this below is the message I got, even though I do have
> gnutls in the system.
>
> ...
> checking for pkg-config... no
> ...
> checking for GifMakeMapObject in -lgif... yes
> configure: error: The following required libraries were not found:
>      gnutls
> Maybe some development libraries/packages are missing?
> To build anyway, give:
>      --with-gnutls=ifavailable
> as options to configure.

Perhaps you didn't regenerate the configure script?  Say "make".

-- 
(domestic pets only, the antidote for overdose, milk.)
   bloggy blog: http://lars.ingebrigtsen.no

bug#47159: 28.0.50; gnutls not recognized in build process without pkg-config

[Jean Louis]

* Lars Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> [2021-03-20 10:53]:
> Jean Louis <bugs@gnu.support> writes:
> 
> > I have now done git pull and removed pkg-config from system
> > temporarily, this below is the message I got, even though I do have
> > gnutls in the system.
> >
> > ...
> > checking for pkg-config... no
> > ...
> > checking for GifMakeMapObject in -lgif... yes
> > configure: error: The following required libraries were not found:
> >      gnutls
> > Maybe some development libraries/packages are missing?
> > To build anyway, give:
> >      --with-gnutls=ifavailable
> > as options to configure.
> 
> Perhaps you didn't regenerate the configure script?  Say "make".

git pull is fresh, and I get this, so I think this is useful now to
get a note to install pkg-config.

configure: WARNING: Unable to locate a usable pkg-config
configure: error: The following required libraries were not found:
     gnutls
Maybe some development libraries/packages are missing?
To build anyway, give:
     --with-gnutls=ifavailable
as options to configure.
make: *** [Makefile:439: config.status] Error 1
~/Programming/Software/emacs