[PATCH v2] configure: Fix error message when C compiler is not working

[PATCH v2] configure: Fix error message when C compiler is not working

[Thomas Huth]

If you try to run the configure script on a system without a working
C compiler, you get a very misleading error message:

 ERROR: Unrecognized host OS (uname -s reports 'Linux')

Some people already opened bug tickets because of this problem:

 https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/issues/2057
 https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/issues/2288

We should rather tell the user that we were not able to use the C
compiler instead, otherwise they will have a hard time to figure
out what was going wrong.

While we're at it, let's also suppress the "unrecognized host CPU"
message in this case since it is rather misleading than helpful.

Fixes: 264b803721 ("configure: remove compiler sanity check")
Signed-off-by: Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com>
---
 v2: Reworked the patch according to Peter's suggestions:
     https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2024-03/msg04643.html

 configure | 11 ++++++++++-
 1 file changed, 10 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

diff --git a/configure b/configure
index 1dca3d94c0..519f1bb6e2 100755
--- a/configure
+++ b/configure
@@ -411,7 +411,9 @@ else
   # Using uname is really broken, but it is just a fallback for architectures
   # that are going to use TCI anyway
   cpu=$(uname -m)
-  echo "WARNING: unrecognized host CPU, proceeding with 'uname -m' output '$cpu'"
+  if test "$host_os" != "bogus"; then
+    echo "WARNING: unrecognized host CPU, proceeding with 'uname -m' output '$cpu'"
+  fi
 fi
 
 # Normalise host CPU name to the values used by Meson cross files and in source
@@ -894,6 +896,13 @@ EOF
 exit 0
 fi
 
+# Now that we are sure that the user did not only want to print the --help
+# information, we should double-check that the C compiler really works:
+write_c_skeleton
+if ! compile_object ; then
+    error_exit "C compiler \"$cc\" either does not exist or does not work."
+fi
+
 # Remove old dependency files to make sure that they get properly regenerated
 rm -f ./*/config-devices.mak.d
 
-- 
2.45.0

Re: [PATCH v2] configure: Fix error message when C compiler is not working

[Philippe Mathieu-Daudé]

On 13/5/24 13:40, Thomas Huth wrote:
> If you try to run the configure script on a system without a working
> C compiler, you get a very misleading error message:
> 
>   ERROR: Unrecognized host OS (uname -s reports 'Linux')
> 
> Some people already opened bug tickets because of this problem:
> 
>   https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/issues/2057
>   https://gitlab.com/qemu-project/qemu/-/issues/2288
> 
> We should rather tell the user that we were not able to use the C
> compiler instead, otherwise they will have a hard time to figure
> out what was going wrong.
> 
> While we're at it, let's also suppress the "unrecognized host CPU"
> message in this case since it is rather misleading than helpful.
> 
> Fixes: 264b803721 ("configure: remove compiler sanity check")
> Signed-off-by: Thomas Huth <thuth@redhat.com>
> ---
>   v2: Reworked the patch according to Peter's suggestions:
>       https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/qemu-devel/2024-03/msg04643.html
> 
>   configure | 11 ++++++++++-
>   1 file changed, 10 insertions(+), 1 deletion(-)

Reviewed-by: Philippe Mathieu-Daudé <philmd@linaro.org>