[Buildroot] [PATCH v2] support/dependencies: ensure we have 'file' on the host

Yann E. MORIN yann.morin.1998 at free.fr
Sun Dec 25 16:14:16 UTC 2016


Recently, the libtool.m4 autoconf macros that are bundled with the
libtool package started using '/usr/bin/file' to determine the type of
library that is generated by the toolchain. Packages that use this
macro will fail in a rather dramatic way when /usr/bin/file is not
present on the host: the package will still build but no shared
library is generated, which in turn may cause build failures in other
packages that link with it.

For example, libpng's configure determines that it is not possible to
build a shared library on MIPS64 because the expected output from 'file'
is not present. Therefore, only a static libpng.a is built. Later,
bandwithd links with -lpng but it doesn't use the pkg-config's
Private-Libs (because it's not linking statically) and it doesn't have
access to the NEEDED reference from the shared library. Therefore, it
doesn't link with zlib and fails with

    pngrutil.c:(.text+0x55c): undefined reference to `inflate'

We cant use host-file because it is itself an autotools package and is
itself using libtool, so this would be a chicken-n-egg problem. Besides,
the libtool script really wants to call /usr/bin/file, so it would not
even find our host-file anyway.

So, just require that 'file' is present on the host.

Signed-off-by: "Yann E. MORIN" <yann.morin.1998 at free.fr>
Cc: Arnout Vandecappelle <arnout at mind.be>
Cc: Baruch Siach <baruch at tkos.co.il>

---
Changs v1 -> v2;
  - use better commit log by Arnout  (Arnout)
  - update manual  (Baruch)
---
 docs/manual/prerequisite.txt         | 1 +
 support/dependencies/dependencies.sh | 4 ++++
 2 files changed, 5 insertions(+)

diff --git a/docs/manual/prerequisite.txt b/docs/manual/prerequisite.txt
index 7edad1f..ce54c9c 100644
--- a/docs/manual/prerequisite.txt
+++ b/docs/manual/prerequisite.txt
@@ -35,6 +35,7 @@ between distributions).
 ** +python+ (version 2.6 or any later)
 ** +unzip+
 ** +rsync+
+** +file+
 
 * Source fetching tools:
 ** +wget+
diff --git a/support/dependencies/dependencies.sh b/support/dependencies/dependencies.sh
index bfd6596..1ec731d 100755
--- a/support/dependencies/dependencies.sh
+++ b/support/dependencies/dependencies.sh
@@ -69,6 +69,10 @@ check_prog_host "which"
 # Verify that sed is installed
 check_prog_host "sed"
 
+# 'file' must be present, otherwise libtool fails in incomprehensible
+# ways.
+check_prog_host "file"
+
 # Check make
 MAKE=$(which make 2> /dev/null)
 if [ -z "$MAKE" ] ; then
-- 
2.7.4



More information about the buildroot mailing list