bug#81285: automake 1.18.1 test status on NetBSD 11.99.6/x86-64

Hi Karl!

Thanks for your reply.

On Mon, Jun 22, 2026 at 03:22:41PM +0100, Karl Berry wrote:
> Thanks for the report, but I'm afraid I don't really know what to do
> about any of them.

Me neither :-)

> The first failure starts with:
>   aclocal.m4:17: warning: this file was generated for autoconf 9999a.
> That looks like it's finding an autoconf prerelease, not the released 2.72?

No, there is no other autoconf installed, just 2.72.

> I see failures relating to install-info. Could the "other" install-info
> be getting found, not the one that's part of GNU Texinfo?

NetBSD comes with a very old one, 4.8a (last GPL2+ version), but there
is no other install-info available AFAIK.

> Other failures relate to m4 files in mysterious-to-me ways.

NetBSD's base system does have a m4, which is not the GNU m4; the GNU
m4 is installed as package into /usr/pkg/bin and is in the
path. Perhaps sometimes the base system one (/usr/bin/m4) is called
instead of /usr/pkg/bin/gm4, and their slight incompatibilities cause
problems?

> Unfortunately I can't eyeball the logs and understand what's going
> on, and I have no effective way to debug on netbsd. Maybe you 
> or someone else here will have an idea of how to proceed.

Perhaps pick one test and let me know how to run it manually, and then
I'll see what I can find out.

Reading t/README made me try

# ./runtest t/aclocal-autoconf-version-check.sh
am-test-lib.sh: Running from installcheck: no
am-test-lib.sh: Test Protocol: none
am-test-lib.sh: PATH = /tmp/automake-1.18.1/bin:/tmp/automake-1.18.1/t/ax:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/pkg/bin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/pkg_bulk/bin:/root/.cargo/bin
+ pwd
/tmp/automake-1.18.1/t/aclocal-autoconf-version-check.dir
+ cat >configure.ac <<...
+ ':' >Makefile.am
+ aclocal-1.18 -Werror
Can't locate Automake/Config.pm in @INC (you may need to install the Automake::Config module) (@INC entries checked: /usr/local/share/automake-1.18 /usr/pkg/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.42.0/x86_64-netbsd-thread-multi /usr/pkg/lib/perl5/site_perl/5.42.0 /usr/pkg/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.42.0/x86_64-netbsd-thread-multi /usr/pkg/lib/perl5/vendor_perl/5.42.0 /usr/pkg/lib/perl5/5.42.0/x86_64-netbsd-thread-multi /usr/pkg/lib/perl5/5.42.0) at /tmp/automake-1.18.1/bin/aclocal-1.18 line 33.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /tmp/automake-1.18.1/bin/aclocal-1.18 line 33.
+ am_exit_trap 2
+ exit_status=2
+ set +e
+ cd /tmp/automake-1.18.1
+ test none = tap
+ test 2 -eq 0
+ keep_testdirs=yes
+ am_keeping_testdirs
+ return 0
+ set +x

and also

# env TESTS="t/aclocal-autoconf-version-check.sh" make -e -k check
make  check-TESTS check-local
PASS: t/aclocal-autoconf-version-check.sh
============================================================================
Testsuite summary for GNU Automake 1.18.1
============================================================================
# TOTAL: 1
# PASS:  1
# SKIP:  0
# XFAIL: 0
# FAIL:  0
# XPASS: 0
# ERROR: 0
============================================================================

both of which are not helpful :-)
 Thomas