Bug 97631

Summary:	libfontenc has a circular build dependency on font-util
Product:	xorg	Reporter:	Gratian Crisan <gratian>
Component:	Build/Modular	Assignee:	Xorg Project Team <xorg-team>
Status:	RESOLVED INVALID	QA Contact:	Xorg Project Team <xorg-team>
Severity:	normal
Priority:	medium
Version:	git
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux (All)
Whiteboard:
i915 platform:		i915 features:

Description Gratian Crisan 2016-09-07 21:01:12 UTC

libfontenc errors out during the autoconf/autogen steps if font-util 1.1 or later is not installed:

$ ./autogen.sh 
autoreconf2.50: Entering directory `.'
autoreconf2.50: configure.ac: not using Gettext
autoreconf2.50: running: aclocal 
configure.ac:42: error: must install X.Org font-util 1.1 or later before running autoconf/autogen
configure.ac:42: the top level
autom4te: /usr/bin/m4 failed with exit status: 1
aclocal: error: echo failed with exit status: 1
autoreconf2.50: aclocal failed with exit status: 1

On the other hand font-util, i.e. mkfontscale, has a dependency on libfontenc (it links against it).

This creates problems for distribution builds. In my particular case it was an OpenEmbedded/Yocto build but from my searches it looks like other distros are running into this too, e.g Debian:
  * https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=717843
  * https://wiki.debian.org/CircularBuildDependencies

The common solution appears to be a staged build process. It would be preferable if libfontenc build dependency on font-util could be removed/avoided.

Comment 1 Alan Coopersmith 2016-09-07 21:12:31 UTC

If you've bundled font-util & mkfontscale together, that's a problem in your
packaging - we provide them separately upstream:
https://www.x.org/releases/individual/font/font-util-1.3.1.tar.bz2
https://www.x.org/releases/individual/app/mkfontscale-1.1.2.tar.bz2

font-util has no dependency on libfontenc, only on xorg-macros.

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