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linuxunixgnuautomake

Unable to build GNU automake - help2man can't get `--help' info from automake-1.16

I'm trying to compile and build automake 1.16 and it fails in the following way:

help2man: can't get `--help' info from automake-1.16
Try `--no-discard-stderr' if option outputs to stderr
make: *** [doc/automake-1.16.1] Error 255

I have searched and found similar issues on Stackoverflow and Github where the solution is to "yum install perl-Thread-Queue"

But I do not have root access. How do I go about compiling automake successfully without installing "perl-Thread-Queue"? I need this specific version of automake for compiling another package.

Solution

  • You need to install help2man and also get Thread::Queue as described here. Essentially:

    # help2man
myprefix=$HOME/.hpc/help2man/1.48.3
wget https://gnuftp.uib.no/help2man/help2man-1.48.3.tar.xz
tar xfv help2man-1.48.3.tar.xz
cd help2man-1.48.3
./configure --prefix=$myprefix   
make -j$(nproc)
make install

    You will also need to install perl to get Thread::Queue.

    curl -L https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ranguard/installing-perl/master/scripts/install_perl_on_nix.sh | bash
cpanm --local-lib=~/perl5 local::lib && eval $(perl -I ~/perl5/lib/perl5/ -Mlocal::lib)
cpanm Thread::Queue # For automake

    Note that before continuing with the installation you need to ensure the paths are set.