strange configure error on Linux Mint 18.3

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz]

Hi Thomas!

On 04/24/2018 02:50 PM, Thomas Stüfe wrote:
> I got a configure error on a fresh, virgin Linux Mint 18.3 install. I
> have not yet installed anything on that box (the only thing I
> installed is autoconf).

Have you tried "apt build-dep openjdk-9"? This should install all the
necessary build dependencies.

> This fails at a point where normally I would get suggestions about
> which tools to install with apt-get (which, btw, is really nice).
> config.log contains this:
> (...)
> /usr/bin/ld: cannot find crt1.o: No such file or directory
> /usr/bin/ld: cannot find crti.o: No such file or directory
> /usr/bin/ld: cannot find -lc
> /usr/bin/ld: cannot find crtn.o: No such file or directory

You're missing the Debian package libc6-dev:

root at z6:~> dpkg -L libc6-dev |grep crt
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/Mcrt1.o
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/Scrt1.o
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/crt1.o
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/crti.o
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/crtn.o
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/gcrt1.o
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/grcrt1.o
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/rcrt1.o
root at z6:~>

> Weirdly enough the compiler is ran once with -qversion, which is an
> AIX-only option, and once with -V, which is not valid either.

This is perfectly normal and the way autoconf works. It tries various
compiler options and runs various tests, including test compiles,
and checks the result. autoconf cannot know in advance what toolchain
and which operating system you are using, so it has to perform these
tests. The error messages are normally just redirected to /dev/null
and only show in config.log.

> Has anyone seen this already? (Note that I used Mint18.3 as
> development machine before and it just worked).

Yes, it's perfectly normal when you try to configure OpenJDK without
any of its build dependencies installed :).

PS: If you are using a real Debian instead of Linux Mint, you get a
     free Multi-Arch environment for free and can easily cross-build
     OpenJDK for all the architectures found in Debian. Let me know
     if you want me to write up a small HowTo.

Adrian

-- 
  .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer - glaubitz at debian.org
`. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaubitz at physik.fu-berlin.de
   `-    GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913