Building Debian package fails on fresh checkout

[jeremyvisser]

I provisioned a fresh copy of Debian Wheezy on EC2 (ami-4e099a74, ap-southeast-2), and ran the following to attempt to build the package:

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get -y install devscripts git
$ git clone git://github.com/dotwaffle/rancid-git
$ cd rancid-git
$ debuild -S
$ cd ..
$ mk-build-deps rancid-git_2.3.8.dsc
$ sudo dpkg -i rancid-git-build-deps_2.3.8_all.deb
$ sudo apt-get -f install
$ cd rancid-git
$ debuild

I ended up with the following error:

configure: creating ./config.status
config.status: error: cannot find input file: `Makefile.in'
make: *** [build-stamp] Error 1
dpkg-buildpackage: error: debian/rules build gave error exit status 2
debuild: fatal error at line 1357:
dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -D -us -uc failed

After a bit of experimentation, I noticed that the 'manual' (non-Debian) instructions on the site at http://dotwaffle.github.io/rancid-git/ suggested running autoreconf. So I edited debian/rules and changed these lines:

 build-stamp: patch-stamp
    dh_testdir
    aclocal
    autoconf

To these:

 build-stamp: patch-stamp
    dh_testdir
    autoreconf

It then builds successfully with debuild. Is that a bug?

[jeremyvisser]

In addition to the above issue, the resulting /usr/lib/rancid/bin/control_rancid binary file literally contained the following on line 461:

${exec_prefix}/bin/par -q -n $PAR_COUNT -c "rancid-fe {}" $devlistfile

It should have been (as far as I can tell — at least, I edited it to this to make it work):

/usr/lib/rancid/bin/par -q -n $PAR_COUNT -c "rancid-fe {}" $devlistfile

The original line from control_rancid.in was:

@bindir@/par -q -n $PAR_COUNT -c "rancid-fe {}" $devlistfile

On a side note, the file /usr/share/man/man1/par.1.gz is present in the resulting Debian package, causing it to conflict with the real par package.

[dotwaffle]

Thanks for the autoconf spot, I've fixed it as best I can. Unfortunately, I'm not a skilled packager, so I appreciate any input you may have.

Regarding the control_rancid element, I'm actually not sure how to proceed, because ./configure should fill in the exec_prefix variable before make is called. I'll think about this and come back to it later in the week, hopefully.

Thanks again.

[jeremyvisser]

I'm not a skilled packager either. All in the same boat here. :-)

Just a quick question about exec_prefix — is the call supposed to be ${exec_prefix}/bin/par (with exec_prefix defined earlier in the script, e.g. exec_prefix=/usr/lib/rancid), or is it supposed to be more like a string subsitution (with the command literally reading /usr/lib/rancid/bin/par)?

I'd like to do some digging on this one myself, but want to make sure I'm following the right trail first. :-)

[dotwaffle]

Can't remember exactly, think it might be libexec somewhere, but as I work in a CentOS shop I haven't got anything to test with ATM!

Will look into spinning up a vagrant Debian at some point and test things out properly!

[jeremyvisser]

I’ve built the following script that will build the package on a freshly installed Debian Wheezy system:

https://gist.github.com/jeremyvisser/8533999

$ cd ~
$ wget https://gist.github.com/jeremyvisser/8533999/raw/0e42150ff1a5ae8162f88120178dbfb78db11076/build-rancid-git.sh && chmod +x build-rancid-git.sh && sudo ./build-rancid-git.sh

By building that script I discovered two further bugs:

1. dpatch should be listed inside Build-Depends
2. /etc/rancid/rancid.conf should ship with RCSSYS=git (currently the default is RCSSYS=cvs which is fine for a generic package, but this package is unashamed to be called rancid-git)

After running that script, you can see the resulting control_rancid script:

$ grep 'bin/par' /usr/lib/rancid/bin/control_rancid 
${exec_prefix}/bin/par -q -n $PAR_COUNT -c "rancid-fe {}" $devlistfile
    ${exec_prefix}/bin/par -q -n $PAR_COUNT -c "rancid-fe \{}" $DIR/routers.up.missed

[dotwaffle]

dpatch is already a Build-Depends in debian/control AFAICT, and you're absolutely right about RCSSYS -- that's a problem with the way the git patch works. I've amended the autoconf script to automatically use git.

Hopefully that solves most of the issues, I just need to find a solution to the "par" problem!

[jeremyvisser]

My apologies, I can see why I got the dpatch bit mistaken — because I attempted to run dpkg-buildpackage -S to generate the source package needed to run mk-build-deps, which obviously happened before said Build-Depends were installed. Doh.

[jeremyvisser]

Just noticed commits ece122de27 and ed72e23c8c, and realised this isn't the first time you've dealt with this problem. Sorry I'm not much more help — I have close to 0% experience with automake.

[dotwaffle]

Hey, not a problem. You're doing a better job than most by actually reporting these bugs rather than most who just complain about it on third party web forums and I never hear about the angst of people new to the project!

Which reminds me, I really need to write some better documentation!

[jeremyvisser]

A further issue on this. It should depend on telnet, as you can go add method <host> telnet in .cloginrc, and if telnet is not installed, it will silently fail (well, it will claim the host is unreachable, which is inaccurate enough to count as a silent failure).

[dotwaffle]

Perhaps a "suggests" rather than "depends", but yes, I agree.

[dotwaffle]

Ok, I've bundled quite a few fixes in to the build. Seems to work ok. Hopefully that should close this issue!