Build issue with autoconf

[jtdaugherty]

I'm having a bit of trouble building terminfo (245be5c). Am I missing something?

Tools:

cabal-install version 3.8.1.0
compiled using version 3.8.1.0 of the Cabal library

The Glorious Glasgow Haskell Compilation System, version 9.4.2

The behavior:

$ cabal new-build
Resolving dependencies...
Build profile: -w ghc-9.4.2 -O1
In order, the following will be built (use -v for more details):
 - terminfo-0.4.1.5 (lib:terminfo) (first run)
Configuring terminfo-0.4.1.5...
Warning: The 'build-type' is 'Configure' but there is no 'configure' script.
You probably need to run 'autoreconf -i' to generate it.
Error: cabal-3.8.1.0: configure script not found.

[jtdaugherty]

I was able to get a working build by taking the above advice and running autoreconf -i, but still, I imagine that's not what you expect to happen.

[judah]

It looks like this is intended behavior of Cabal:
haskell/cabal#4903 (comment)

The configure script is generated from the configure.ac file and is included in source distributions to Hackage, but intentionally not checked into the git repo.

It could be worth mentioning this in the repo README; would you like to send a patch?

[jtdaugherty]

I am happy to submit a patch to add an extra instruction to the README, but I guess I'm confused now about why configure would be included in the Hackage sdist. Wouldn't that possibly be wrong for some target systems? Wouldn't it be best to always generate a configure on the target system as part of the build process?

[jtdaugherty]

(Also, thanks for investigating that.)