phaq

Today I had to add the PHP ‘bcmath’ extension to my FreeBSD host.
Actually, that’s a fairly easy one-liner:


[root@localhost ~]# cd /usr/ports/math/php5-bcmath && make clean install


However, I ended up with a crude error message:

Cannot find autoconf. Please check your autoconf installation and the
$PHP_AUTOCONF environment variable. Then, rerun this script.

Bummer! So let’s see how to fix this.

Here’s the complete output from the failed build:


[root@localhost /usr/ports/math/php5-bcmath]# make
===> Vulnerability check disabled, database not found
===> License check disabled, port has not defined LICENSE
===> Extracting for php5-bcmath-5.3.3_2
=> SHA256 Checksum OK for php-5.3.3.tar.bz2.
===> Patching for php5-bcmath-5.3.3_2
===> php5-bcmath-5.3.3_2 depends on file: /usr/local/bin/phpize - found
===> php5-bcmath-5.3.3_2 depends on file: /usr/local/bin/autoconf-2.68 - found
===> PHPizing for php5-bcmath-5.3.3_2
Configuring for:
PHP Api Version: 20090626
Zend Module Api No: 20090626
Zend Extension Api No: 220090626
Cannot find autoconf. Please check your autoconf installation and the
$PHP_AUTOCONF environment variable. Then, rerun this script.

*** Error code 1

Stop in /usr/ports/math/php5-bcmath.


From this we see, that error occurs during phpize, which tries to configure/build the extension matching up the currently installed PHP.

Looking into phpize, which is actually a plain script, we find these lines:


[root@noc2 /usr/ports/math/php5-bcmath]# grep -E -e 'PHP_AUTO(CONF|HEADER)' /usr/local/bin/phpize
test -z "$PHP_AUTOCONF" && PHP_AUTOCONF=autoconf-2.62
test -z "$PHP_AUTOHEADER" && PHP_AUTOHEADER=autoheader-2.62
if test ! -x "$PHP_AUTOCONF" && test ! -x "`$php_shtool path $PHP_AUTOCONF`"; then
\$PHP_AUTOCONF environment variable. Then, rerun this script.
if test ! -x "$PHP_AUTOHEADER" && test ! -x "`$php_shtool path $PHP_AUTOHEADER`"; then
\$PHP_AUTOHEADER environment variable. Then, rerun this script.
$PHP_AUTOCONF || exit 1
$PHP_AUTOHEADER || exit 1


So phpize actually checks for existence of the PHP_AUTOCONF and PHP_AUTOHEADER environment variables.
If these are missing, it will use some defaults for the autoconf/autoheader tools. The default were derived during the initial build which at that time were autoconf-2.62 and autoheader-2.62.

Checking installed ports reveals that there’s a newer version installed, which is why phpize fails so terribly.


[root@noc2 /usr/ports/math/php5-bcmath]# pkg_info|grep autoconf
autoconf-2.68 Automatically configure source code on many Un*x platforms
autoconf-wrapper-20071109 Wrapper script for GNU autoconf


To permanently fix this, you can do either of the following:

1. simply change the PHP_AUTOCONF and PHP_AUTOHEADER variables in /usr/local/bin/phpize to reflect the currently installed version
2. additionally install the old autoconf version besides the new one
3. Invoke the build like this:
   
PHP_AUTOCONF=autoconf PHP_AUTOHEADER=autoheader make configure


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