[Toybox] GNU autotools are not working

[Rob Landley]

On 10/29/24 13:53, Brian Mayer wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> I'm trying to compile GNU make v3.79 using toybox and tcc, but it
> fails on the configure part.

That's odd, https://github.com/landley/toybox/issues/461 managed to 
build gmake once I fixed the issue he was seeing? (It's still open 
because I need to cut a release with the fix in it...)

I a lot of this sort of thing years ago as part of 
https://landley.net/aboriginal/about.html (which is why I was 
maintaining busybox at the time). Generally there's a config.log down 
under gnu/crap/stupid/ohgod/stallman/ia/ia/ftaghn/gnu directory 
somewhere, do a "find . -iname config.log" and then see what's in there.

Don't ask me why gnu/they don't gnu/emit the gnu/failures to stderr. 
That would make too much sense, they need gnu/hazing rituals to keep out 
the unwashed masses I guess.

Doing toybox _and_ tcc at the same time seems a bit extreme, in general 
changing multiple variables at once makes experimental results WAY 
harder to parse. Hence the invention of laboratory conditions. :)

Back in the aboriginal days I started from "known working" (a scripted 
thus reproducible Linux From Scratch 3.0 build) and swapped out one 
busybox command at a time, comparing the output (and log files) of each 
before/after run and then doing a LOT of debugging to track down each 
deviation. And yes, this means I hit the reproducibility issues at least 
5 years before the debian guys did. (Run the build twice the result is 
not CLOSE to binary identical... Sucks less these days but still not 
FIXED. The actual configure output to stdout should match though, along 
with the files written by ./configure, and I tracked down and explained 
every deviation. Along with stuff like 
https://landley.net/notes-2008.html#04-07-2008 and so on...)

Modulo glibc's dependencies (perl!) are sad enough that this time around 
a musl-libc gcc toolchain was my first pass to establish a baseline, but 
http://lists.landley.net/pipermail/toybox-landley.net/2024-September/030526.html 
strongly implies that it's working fine. Plus, you know, alpine existing. :)

You might also want to coordinate with 
http://lists.landley.net/pipermail/toybox-landley.net/2024-September/030526.html 
(which is another reply window I have open but haven't managed to scrape 
up the spoons for yet).

My own work in this area (https://landley.net/notes.html#22-06-2024 and 
https://github.com/landley/toybox/blob/master/mkroot/packages/lfs-sources 
which is kinda a second go at 
https://github.com/landley/control-images/tree/master/images/lfs-bootstrap/mnt 
ala https://landley.net/aboriginal/control-images/) got hung up on the 
patches in 
http://ftp.osuosl.org/pub/lfs/lfs-packages/lfs-packages-12.1.tar NOT 
BEING UNIFIED DIFFS. They're diff -c format diffs, and adding support to 
toybox patch for diff -c format... really shouldn't be a big lift, but 
I'm not firing on all cylinders these days. :(

I used to maintain my own tcc fork but gave up YEARS ago 
(https://landley.net/code/tinycc and https://landley.net/code/qcc) 
because Grishka is a windows developer and... Anyway, tangent.

Can you build mkroot with a tcc toolchain? Kernel and

(I have "writing a new make" on my toybox todo list, but hit burnout 
this year. Sometime between moving from TX to MN this spring, getting 
flooded here on the list by a well-meaning developer who just took the 
fun out of everything, getting covid YET AGAIN (still sucks), having yet 
to find a proper coffee shop setup here in minneapolis (workspace is 
important), and the looming return out outright fascism, I've spent the 
past few months kinda spinning my wheels...)

> I tested the c compiler and it works,

Define "works". It took years for people to build linux-kernel with 
llvm, there was a whole PROJECT for it, which has mostly gone the way of 
uclinux.org (declared victory and disbanded). And I specifically mean 
"the kernel", 
https://www.cnx-software.com/2012/07/16/ellcc-multi-target-cross-compiler-based-on-clang-and-llvm-compiler-infrastructure/ 
was about trying to get userspace to work...

Anyway, Android started building with clang around 2015 but they 
deprecated gcc rather than immediately removing it because compilers 
aren't quite fungible...

> so it may be something related
> to how GNU autotools interact with toybox or the compiler.

Do you mean you built gmake with tinycc, and the rest of the $PATH being 
debian or similar?

> The errors are hard to follow, but it seems to be related with the
> confdefs.h and .c files, after a lot of sed and cat commands.
> The idea is to bootstrap the build tools, i.e. compile make without
> make or other tools that depend on make.

Ok, I'll bite. How do you compile make without make? (Do they provide a 
shell script, like toybox's https://landley.net/toybox/faq.html#hermetic
or what?)

> This is the output of the command:
> 
> # ./configure
> creating cache ./config.cache
> checking for a BSD compatible install... /bin/install -c
> checking whether build environment is sane... yes
> checking whether make sets ${MAKE}... ./configure[795]: can't create
> temporary file : No such file or directory
> no

That "can't create temporary file" looks like the first error. Which is 
not a string that exists in toybox (where we'd almost certainly say 
"temp" to save 5 bytes :) but presumably is configure responding to a 
command failure? Again, check config.log.

> After editing the configure script and not letting it remove temporary
> test files I was able to check the conftest.c file
> that is used to test the C compiler, and the file is empty. Don't know
> if this is expected.
> 
> Can someone point me in the right direction?

find . -name '*.log'

> Thanks.

Rob