Re: gdb: "error: no usable dependency style found"

[Patrick Welche <prlw1%cam.ac.uk@localhost>]

On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 07:50:52PM +0000, David Holland wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 18, 2012 at 01:35:17PM -0500, David Young wrote:
>  > On Thu, Dec 15, 2011 at 11:58:14AM +0100, Manuel Bouyer wrote:
>  > > Hello,
>  > > trying to build a cross-gdb targetting amd64 (with build.sh -V 
> MKCROSSGDB=yes)
>  > > on a linux host, I get:
>  > > checking for _FILE_OFFSET_BITS value needed for large files... no
>  > > checking for cc option to accept ANSI C... none needed
>  > > checking dependency style of cc... none
>  > > configure: error: no usable dependency style found
>  > > *** [configure-gdb] Error code 1
>  > > 
>  > > this used to work, I think it's related to the recent gdb update.
>  > > Any idea ?
>  > 
>  > I just stumbled on this today.  I'm building 6.0 RC1 on a Linux host.
>  > Besides building w/o MKCROSSGDB=yes, are any workarounds/fixes known?
> 
> The only way to debug/deal with crap like this is to wade through what
> the configure script is actually trying to run.

A quick look in gdb-7.5 says the macro is in gdb/gnulib/aclocal.m4

# _AM_DEPENDENCIES(NAME)
# ----------------------
# See how the compiler implements dependency checking.
# NAME is "CC", "CXX", "GCJ", or "OBJC".
# We try a few techniques and use that to set a single cache variable.

I suppose it may be that ./depcomp isn't found... Any clues in config.log?

Cheers,

Patrick