Build fails on ArchLinux

[ghost]

When building i3-gaps-git from the AUR, the build process fails at ipc.c with the following error(s):

[i3] CC src/ipc.c
In file included from ../i3/src/ipc.c:13:0:
../i3/src/ipc.c: In function ‘handle_get_version’:
include/yajl_utils.h:17:53: error: expected expression before ‘)’ token
 #define y(x, ...) yajl_gen_ ## x (gen, ##__VA_ARGS__)
                                                     ^
../i3/src/ipc.c:741:5: note: in expansion of macro ‘y’
     y(integer, MAJOR_VERSION);
     ^
include/yajl_utils.h:17:53: error: expected expression before ‘)’ token
 #define y(x, ...) yajl_gen_ ## x (gen, ##__VA_ARGS__)
                                                     ^
../i3/src/ipc.c:744:5: note: in expansion of macro ‘y’
     y(integer, MINOR_VERSION);
     ^
src/i3.mk:36: recipe for target 'src/ipc.o' failed

The same occurs when building from a cloned repository.

[ninja-coding]

Same happens to me, on both branches i3-gaps and i3-gaps-next

[Airblader]

Two people on reddit reported the same. One of them could fix it again later, for no apparent reason (http://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/2qkdfm/i3_with_gaps_m_and_no_status_bar/cn7jeew).

Could you please try compiling vanilla i3? I have no clue on why this would be an issue of my fork. If you can't compile vanilla i3 either, it's an i3 issue.

cd /tmp && git clone git://code.i3wm.org/i3 && cd i3
make

It could be a compiler issue. You definitely need gcc to compile it. I've compiled it successfully on Manjaro before, haven't tried it on Arch yet.

[ninja-coding]

vanilla i3 compiles fine for me, trying to compile your branch gives me the same error as @skoftoby but the first line is this one:

fatal: No names found, cannot describe anything.

not sure if it's relevant, running gcc --version outputs

gcc (GCC) 4.9.2 20141224 (prerelease)

[ghost]

Vanilla i3 builds and runs perfectly fine, gcc version is the same as @ninja-coding's.

[Airblader]

I think this might have something to do with the fact that I deleted all tags. Can someone try adding a tag to the latest commit (just for the sake of having one) and building again?

[Airblader]

Removing all tags locally, I can reproduce the issue. You can fix it by running a dummy git tag 1.0 and then recompiling. I'll push a fix for this soon.

[magebeans]

Pardon my ignorance, but what exactly does adding the tags do that makes it compile alright?

[akolosov]

git tag 1.0 and make clean && make

[magebeans]

Yes, but why does that help? I can't see how adding tags makes it compile.

[ninja-coding]

It compiled fine adding a tag, this is so weird

[Airblader]

i3 compiles a version string and the like. For this it uses git describe --tags which will fail if there is no tag.

Now, the make process will set some (environment / compile?) variables which due to the failed command are empty. This causes the compilation of the macro to fail.

[Airblader]

I just merged and pushed all upstream tags. You should probably remove the fake tag again.

[sph432]

Ran into the same problem, the cause was that older (in my case, 1.8.3) git versions do not recognise the -C option.