Files missing from Github repo resulting in compilation failures

[jahway603]

I'm reporting this issue as I am not able to build/compile INN using either the Github repo or the Github source releases. Both the Github repo & Gihub source releases are missing certain files which do exist in the source code releases from the ISC website, such as configure and include/config.h.in -- the ISC source code release is building/compiling and has these files which are missing from the Github.

Also, the Arch Linux package does build/compile INN successfully, but it is using the source code from ISC, as seen on Line 61

Can these missing files, which are required to build/compile INN, be included in this Github repo?

[Julien-Elie]

When building directly from the GitHub sources, you have to run the following commands first (see BOOTSRAP):

    ./autogen
    ./configure
    make bootstrap

Alternatively, if you do not want to bootstrap the sources, you can use the daily generated snapshots which contain the latest source with the bootstrapped files like configure.

[jahway603]

Thank you for this @Julien-Elie. I was able to successfully build inn from this github repo, but I used make instead of make bootstrap.

[Julien-Elie]

make bootstrap will essentially generate the documentation.
I think the missing step was for you ./autogen. Once run, you can ./configure and just run the usual make command. It will generate the documentation at the same time it builds INN.

[jahway603]

Much appreciated! With your help, I was able to create the Arch Linux AUR inn-git package for people who want to run the bleeding edge INN.

[Julien-Elie]

Good to know! Thanks for having packaged the latest version of INN!

If I may suggest:

[innd.service]
Description=Inetnet News Daemon

There's a typo in the name of INN. Also, if you wish to add more parameters, you can have a look at the init systemd sample.

Why not just use news instead of IDs? Aren't they define in the system? (Why not create them instead, if not present?)
It would notably save you the change in config.h:

	--with-news-user=9 \
	--with-news-group=13
  # See https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/DeveloperWiki:UID_/_GID_Database
  test -f include/config.h
  cat >>include/config.h <<EOF
#undef RUNASUSER
#define RUNASUSER "news"
#undef RUNASGROUP
#define RUNASGROUP "news"
EOF

It seems that there is no default crontab shipped with the package. Couldn't one be added at least with news.daily, rnews -U, sendinpaths (along with the appropriate inpaths! flush) and a regular flushing of cached IP addresses (reloading incoming.conf)?

There also are useful dependencies to install which do not seem to be present (like gnupg, libcanlock which is in AUR, zlib).