[Nagiosplug-devel] file time problem in nagiosplug-1.3-beta1 (with fix/workaround)

[John Sellens]

I was trying to build nagiosplug-1.3-beta1 and ran into some unexpected
automake complaints:

    % make
    cd . && /usr/local/bin/aclocal
    cd . && /usr/local/bin/automake --gnu Makefile
    automake: configure.in: `AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE' must be used
    automake: your implementation of AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE comes from an
    automake: old Automake version.  You should recreate aclocal.m4
    automake: with aclocal and run automake again.
    make: *** [Makefile.in] Error 1

This is because this machine happens to have a current-ish version of
aclocal/automake/autoconf, rather than automake 1.4 or so that's
required.

This problem should not normally happen, because someone building
a package should not normally need to run automake/autoconf/aclocal.

The root of the problem is that some files in the nagiosplug-1.3-beta1
distribution have not quite the right timestamps, which cause the
Makefile to attempt to rebuild them, which in turn requires the
correct version of automake etc.

These are the timestamps from the distribution:
    % ls -lgrt aclo* Ma* configure.in configure
    -rw-r--r--   1 jsellens    1415 Feb 28 01:42 aclocal.m4
    -rw-r--r--   1 jsellens     266 Feb 28 01:42 Makefile.am
    -rw-r--r--   1 jsellens   33842 Jun 12 23:03 configure.in
    -rwxr-xr-x   1 jsellens  175475 Jun 13 10:02 configure
    -rw-r--r--   1 jsellens   12119 Jun 13 10:02 Makefile.in

They should actually be in this order (oldest to newest):
    Makefile.am
    configure.in
    aclocal.m4
    Makefile.in
    configure


In building the distribution tar file, I think that if one either does
    make; make dist
or
    make; make distclean
    cd ..; tar czf nagiosplug-1.3-beta1.tar.gz ./nagiosplug-1.3-beta1
then I think the "right thing" happens.  Curiously though, following
a "make distclean", the Makefiles run "autoheader" a number of times.
So perhaps "make; make dist" is the way to go.


A workaround way to build:
    gunzip < nagiosplug-1.3-beta1.tar.gz | tar xf -
    cd nagiosplug-1.3-beta1
    touch aclocal.m4; sleep 1
    touch Makefile.in; sleep 1
    touch configure; sleep 1
    ./configure
    [g]make


Hope this helps - cheers!

John
jsellens at generalconcepts.com