I'm trying to build a Debian package for an old project, but I'm stuck with a quite strange error.
When using the given Makefile with the make command, the program builds itself without error. But when I use dpkg-buildpackage -us -uc or debuild -us -uc to build the package, I get multiple times this error (on different files) :
/usr/bin/gcc -fpic -pthread -g -O2 -fstack-protector --param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -Wformat -Werror=format-security -o ../../x86_64_R3.13.0-29-generic/2bin/LIBDMC/getline.o SOURCE/SHARED/getline.c
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/debug/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/crt1.o(.debug_info): relocation 0 has invalid symbol index 11
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/debug/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/crt1.o(.debug_info): relocation 1 has invalid symbol index 12
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/debug/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/crt1.o(.debug_info): relocation 2 has invalid symbol index 2
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/debug/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/crt1.o(.debug_info): relocation 3 has invalid symbol index 2
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/debug/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/crt1.o(.debug_info): relocation 4 has invalid symbol index 11
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/debug/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/crt1.o(.debug_info): relocation 5 has invalid symbol index 13
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/debug/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/crt1.o(.debug_info): relocation 6 has invalid symbol index 13
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/debug/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/crt1.o(.debug_info): relocation 7 has invalid symbol index 13
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/debug/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/crt1.o(.debug_info): relocation 8 has invalid symbol index 12
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/debug/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/crt1.o(.debug_info): relocation 9 has invalid symbol index 13
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/debug/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/crt1.o(.debug_info): relocation 10 has invalid symbol index 13
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/debug/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/crt1.o(.debug_info): relocation 11 has invalid symbol index 13
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/debug/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/crt1.o(.debug_info): relocation 12 has invalid symbol index 13
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/debug/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/crt1.o(.debug_info): relocation 13 has invalid symbol index 13
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/debug/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/crt1.o(.debug_info): relocation 14 has invalid symbol index 13
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/debug/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/crt1.o(.debug_info): relocation 15 has invalid symbol index 13
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/debug/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/crt1.o(.debug_info): relocation 16 has invalid symbol index 13
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/debug/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/crt1.o(.debug_info): relocation 17 has invalid symbol index 13
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/debug/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/crt1.o(.debug_info): relocation 18 has invalid symbol index 13
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/debug/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/crt1.o(.debug_info): relocation 19 has invalid symbol index 21
/usr/bin/ld: /usr/lib/debug/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/crt1.o(.debug_line): relocation 0 has invalid symbol index 2
/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.8/../../../x86_64-linux-gnu/crt1.o: In function `_start':
(.text+0x20): undefined reference to `main'
collect2: error: ld returned 1 exit status
It states that no main was found, but when built with make, this problem doesn't occur. Note that it was working perfectly well 2 days ago, but it stopped working yesterday...
Here is the output of gcc -v :
Using built-in specs.
COLLECT_GCC=gcc
COLLECT_LTO_WRAPPER=/usr/lib/gcc/x86_64-linux-gnu/4.8/lto-wrapper
Target: x86_64-linux-gnu
Configured with: ../src/configure -v --with-pkgversion='Ubuntu 4.8.2-19ubuntu1'
--with-bugurl=file:///usr/share/doc/gcc-4.8/README.Bugs
--enable-languages=c,c++,java,go,d,fortran,objc,obj-c++ --prefix=/usr
--program-suffix=-4.8 --enable-shared --enable-linker-build-id --libexecdir=/usr/lib
--without-included-gettext --enable-threads=posix --with-gxx-include-dir=/usr/include/c++/4.8
--libdir=/usr/lib --enable-nls --with-sysroot=/ --enable-clocale=gnu
--enable-libstdcxx-debug --enable-libstdcxx-time=yes --enable-gnu-unique-object
--disable-libmudflap --enable-plugin --with-system-zlib --disable-browser-plugin
--enable-java-awt=gtk --enable-gtk-cairo --with-java-home=/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-gcj-4.8-amd64/jre
--enable-java-home --with-jvm-root-dir=/usr/lib/jvm/java-1.5.0-gcj-4.8-amd64
--with-jvm-jar-dir=/usr/lib/jvm-exports/java-1.5.0-gcj-4.8-amd64
--with-arch-directory=amd64 --with-ecj-jar=/usr/share/java/eclipse-ecj.jar
--enable-objc-gc --enable-multiarch --disable-werror --with-arch-32=i686
--with-abi=m64 --with-multilib-list=m32,m64,mx32 --with-tune=generic
--enable-checking=release --build=x86_64-linux-gnu --host=x86_64-linux-gnu
--target=x86_64-linux-gnu
Thread model: posix
gcc version 4.8.2 (Ubuntu 4.8.2-19ubuntu1)
I'm not posting any code since it is quite long (even the Makefile) and that the problem shouldn't be located there since it works when using make.
I finally found out the problem : debuild and dpkg-buildpackage initialize the environment variable CFLAGS to a certain value, and my Makefile was calling other Makefiles with the -e option. Those Makefiles were initializing CFLAGS with the -c ... option but the -e option of make overrides local variables by those already defined in the environment. Therefore, CFLAGS had a value without a -c option and built a binary instead of an object file. That's why ld didn't find a main in the program.