Knowledge Base

[  455s] make: 'build' is up to date.
[  455s]  fakeroot debian/rules binary
[  455s] dh binary
[  455s]    dh_update_autotools_config
[  462s]    dh_autoreconf
[  474s] autoreconf: warning: autoconf input should be named 'configure.ac', not 'configure.in'
[  474s] autoreconf: error: configure.in: AC_INIT not found; not an autoconf script?
[  485s] dh_autoreconf: error: autoreconf -f -i returned exit code 1
[  486s] make: *** [debian/rules:7: binary] Error 25
[  486s] dpkg-buildpackage: error: fakeroot debian/rules binary subprocess returned exit status 2
[  486s] ### VM INTERACTION START ###
[  487s] Powering off.
[  487s] [  465.787492] reboot: Power down
[  487s] ### VM INTERACTION END ###
[  487s]
[  487s] lamb64 failed "build _service:extract_file:waterfox+devuan.dsc" at Wed Sep  1 12:17:25 UTC 2021.

After some Internet searching I learned that the problem is because one of the changes to debhelper now tries to run autoreconf, but this Mozilla-based package doesn't need it run. The fix is actually just a one-line change to debian/rules:

diff --git a/waterfox/debian/rules b/waterfox/debian/rules
index 7e4cff5..7a68fcd 100755
--- a/waterfox/debian/rules
+++ b/waterfox/debian/rules
@@ -4,7 +4,7 @@
 export SHELL=/bin/bash

 %:
-       dh $@
+       dh $@ --without autoreconf

My fix to my waterfox source package is very simple.