CODEWITHSUNDEEP
autotoolsconfigureautoconfautomake
Kemin Zhou
Kemin Zhou

Reputation: 6891

configure: WARNING: 'missing' script is too old or missing

I am new to autotools and trying to learn it. I encountered a problem while trying to run configure on an existing open source project and get this error:

./configure
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /usr/bin/install -c
checking whether build environment is sane... yes
/home/myaccount/coding/Plotutils/missing: Unknown `--is-lightweight' option
Try `/home/kzhou/coding/Plotutils/missing --help' for more information
configure: WARNING: 'missing' script is too old or missing

I don't see any good posting for fixing this problem. How to fix this problem?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 9660

Answers (2)

Diego Elio Pettenò
Diego Elio Pettenò

Reputation: 3240

This is usually caused by mispackaged sources, for instance if they checked in to the SCM the configure file but not the rest of the auxiliary files, or the source tarball was not generated by make dist.

A quick solution is to ensure all the Autotools are re-executed:

autoreconf -fi

this will re-generate configure, Makefile.in and so on, and bring a new set of auxiliary files. It needs autoconf, automake and possibly libtool packages installed though, so it might be a bit of overkill.

Upvotes: 3

Kemin Zhou
Kemin Zhou

Reputation: 6891

When looking inside the missing file in the project directory it has

scriptversion=2009-04-28.21; # UTC

In my ubuntu system I found the script at

/usr/share/libtool/build-aux/missing

It's version is

scriptversion=2013-10-28.13; # UTC

Simply copy the newer version to your project will fix this problem:

cp /usr/share/libtool/build-aux/missing .

Upvotes: 2

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