Automatic dependency tracking install dbus on OS X 10.4.11

[SamBushman]

While attempting to install Pidgin on my iMac G4 (running OS X 10.4.11), I encountered an error during the configure stage of installing the dbus dependency. The error I see may be reproduced by simply attempting to install the dbus package on its own. Attached are the Main.log and Config.log files from my reproduction.

[kencu (Ken)]

This is a common error lately on 10.4. I think it has to do with the older make program used on Tiger, together with a newer version of autotools that has come along recently.

the immediate solution is to add a block like this to the Portfile

platform darwin 8 {
    configure.args-append -disable-dependency-tracking
}

I don't know if there is a general solution we can apply to every build in macports base. I think we might solve this if we defaulted to a newer version of make on Tiger, but I haven't explored that fully as yet.

[SamBushman]

Awesome! Thank you for the quick response! For those who don't know how to edit a ports file (like me up to about 10 minutes ago), the following page was useful: ​https://trac.macports.org/wiki/howto/Upgrade

Hopefully calling out the error and a clean solution will help others googling around.

[kencu (Ken)]

If you like, spend a moment to learn how to open a PR on github for these fixes, and I'll commit them.

[mf2k (Frank Schima)]

In the future, please fill in the Port field and add the port maintainer(s) to Cc (port info --maintainers dbus), if any.

[kencu (Ken)]

not really a problem with dbus. Basically every port that uses autotools will need that block added on Tiger, unless I can figure out why it's actually occurring.

[kencu (Ken)]

Looks like what is happening is that the configure script is calling make to generate the dependency tracking information now -- this appears to have become enabled in some recent update to autotools.

And when the configure script on Tiger calls make, it finds the old one in /usr/bin/make rather than the new one in /opt/local/bin/gmake (obviously), and the old make barfs on the newer command syntax.

One way to fix this is to set up some configure & build env vars to point MAKE to the new gmake -- ugh - in every port -ugh.

OR -- if I just make a symlink from /opt/local/bin/gmake to /opt/local/bin/make then everything works without touching any portfiles.

This is getting to be too much work -- one symlink vs. tweaking hundreds of ports. I'm going to see if I can sell adding a symlink from gmake to make on Tiger by default, and save us all 1000 hours.

Then maybe base can put a dep on gmake in some palatable way for Tiger, and we can all forget about this issue.

[kencu (Ken)]

see also 50619.

[MarcusCalhoun-Lopez (Marcus Calhoun-Lopez)]

In babc022a8c284f2f53b78d9ae4b75276e3533581/macports-ports (master):

dbus: use gmake in configure script on older systems

Fixes #58436