Compiling fails

[illera88]

Hi,
I'm in a Debian 64 bits and I'm failing to build swftools:

I do:
git clone https://github.com/matthiaskramm/swftools
cd swftools
./configure
make

Configure runs well but when the make I get:

make[2]: Leaving directory '/tmp/swftools/lib/pdf'
Makefile:184: recipe for target 'libgfxpdf.a' failed
make[1]: Leaving directory '/tmp/swftools/lib'
Makefile:7: recipe for target 'all' failed
make[2]: *** No rule to make target 'xpdf/TextOutputDev.o', needed by '../libgfxpdf.a'.  Stop.
make[1]: *** [libgfxpdf.a] Error 2
make: *** [all] Error 2

Any idea why?

Thanks

[matthiaskramm]

Could you try running "make" again, just to make sure this is not a transient failure?

[illera88]

You are right. It works if I run make again. Why is that?? I am creating a Dockerfie and I cand build the container image since the first make exits with error.

Thanks for your fast response

[matthiaskramm]

As far as I'm aware, it's a bug in make. I can try to dig up the bug number if you're interested.

[illera88]

I did a little trick so Docker does not exit after the failure so this is not a priority for me.

Thanks again!

[coderobe]

This is still happening. Do you have a bug reference to the bug in make you're.. referencing? I think this is much more likely to be a dependency issue in one of the autotools include files than a make bug.

[matthiaskramm]

Hm. I remember @alexeyv and me digging through the gmake bug list and finding one that described the exact scenario. But I can't find it anymore.

It's perfectly possible that you're right, and that this is just a bug in one of swftools' make files. But if so, it's a subtle bug.

lib/pdf/Makefile declares the programmatic rule:

xpdf/%.$(O): xpdf/%.cc
        $(CC) -I ./ -I xpdf $< -o $@           

And there is a xpdf/TextOutputDev.cc, so said rule should kick in. But make sometimes complains that it doesn't have a rule to build xpdf/TextOutputDev.o!

I think to debug this, we'd have to compile our own make, sprinkle printfs over it and see where it goes wrong.