Re: building on freeBSD

[2026-05-23 13:49] Bakul Shah <[email protected]>
> > On May 23, 2026, at 1:33=E2=80=AFPM, Philipp <[email protected]=
e> wrote:
> > =

> > Hi
> > =

> > When building on FreeBSD you need additional LDFLAGS and CPPFLAGS which
> > includes the localbase. For simpler setup the configure.ac contains
> > a check for FreeBSD and adds the localbase to the compiler flags.
> > =

> > The problem is the command to find the localbase assumes the portstree
> > is availible. When the portstree is not availible the configure script
> > fails while checking for connect.
> > =

> > So the command is:
> > =

> >> echo '.include <bsd.port.mk>' | make -k -f /dev/stdin -V LOCALBASE
> > =

> > and gives following output on my machine:
> > =

> >> make: /usr/share/mk/bsd.port.mk:27: Cannot open /usr/ports/Mk/bsd.port=
=2Emk
> >> in /dev/stdin:1
> >> make: Fatal errors encountered -- cannot continue
> >> make: stopped in /home/satanist
> > =

> > /home/satanist is my home directory. Only the last line is written to
> > stdout and the exitcode is 1.
> > =

> > I have some ideas how to fix this:
> > =

> > * only output a warning when FreeBSD is detected
> > * fallback to /usr/local/ when the command fails
> > * remove the special handling completly
> > * add a specia --localbase to configure when run on *BSD
> > =

> > I have no idea what the best way is to fix this.
>
> What about just creating /usr/port/Mk/* ?
> I just did that (unmounted /usr/port and added the above dir)
> and ./configure completed fine.

I'm not sure if you want to help me getting nmh build or find a fix for
the issue. So to be clear: I'm able to workaround this issue.

Why I have written the mail: I would argue building should either work
without having to tinker on your system or fail with a reasonable error
message. So I would say this is a bug in the build system.

Philipp