./configure gets it wrong when libunistring version is exactly 1.2.0

Gordon Steemson <[email protected]> Tue, 13 Aug 2024 16:00:46 -0700
Newsgroups gmane.comp.web.wget.general
Message-ID <[email protected]>
I am attempting to build wget 1.24.5 from the source tarball, and discovered that `make test` fails to build.  A very long investigation revealed that a needed function, uc_width, is not getting compiled into gnulib:  it is defined in `lib/uniwidth/width.c`, which theoretically gets compiled into `libgnu-wcwidth.o`, but that never happens because my libunistring's version (1.2.0) triggers the configure script to comment that build instruction out of the Makefile (see the areas around line 62720 in `./configure` and around line 390 in `./lib/Makefile`).  I am assuming this to be done by some obscure M4 macro (perhaps one that came with Gnulib?), because libunistring is not referenced at all in `configure.ac`.

I'm going to work around it by either editing the Makefile or installing a newer version of libunistring, but this seemed like something you ought to be told about.

Gordon Steemson