[PATCH 1/4] readline: improve aclocal.m4 handling

[PATCH 1/4] readline: improve aclocal.m4 handling

[Ross Burton]

I don't know why I decided to copy aclocal.m4 to acinclude.m4 to avoid
autotools.bbclass deleting the upstream hand-maintained aclocal.m4, but
I did.

A neater fix is to exclude aclocal, which has the side-effect of not
deleting aclocal.m4 in do_configure.

Signed-off-by: Ross Burton <ross.burton@arm.com>
---
 meta/recipes-core/readline/readline.inc | 10 +++-------
 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 7 deletions(-)

diff --git a/meta/recipes-core/readline/readline.inc b/meta/recipes-core/readline/readline.inc
index 555bd0876f9..06630dc455c 100644
--- a/meta/recipes-core/readline/readline.inc
+++ b/meta/recipes-core/readline/readline.inc
@@ -17,17 +17,13 @@ SRC_URI += "file://inputrc"
 
 inherit autotools texinfo
 
-EXTRA_AUTORECONF += "--exclude=autoheader"
+# Ensure we don't delete the shipped aclocal.m4 or config.h.in
+EXTRA_AUTORECONF += "--exclude=autoheader,aclocal"
+
 EXTRA_OECONF += "bash_cv_termcap_lib=ncurses --with-shared-termcap-library"
 
 LEAD_SONAME = "libreadline.so"
 
-do_configure:prepend () {
-	if [ ! -e ${S}/acinclude.m4 ]; then
-		cat ${S}/aclocal.m4 > ${S}/acinclude.m4
-	fi
-}
-
 do_install:append () {
 	# Make install doesn't properly install these
 	oe_libinstall -so -C shlib libhistory ${D}${libdir}
-- 
2.43.0

[PATCH 2/4] lzop: improve aclocal.m4 handling

[Ross Burton]

This upstream has a hand-maintained aclocal.m4 which we don't want to
delete (autotools.bbclass does this).  For some reason this was worked
around by shipping a copy of aclocal.m4 as acinclude.m4 and dropping
that into the build tree.

A better solution is to just exclude aclocal in EXTRA_AUTORECONF, which
has the side-effect of not removing the file.

Signed-off-by: Ross Burton <ross.burton@arm.com>
---
 meta/recipes-support/lzop/lzop_1.04.bb | 9 +++------
 1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)

diff --git a/meta/recipes-support/lzop/lzop_1.04.bb b/meta/recipes-support/lzop/lzop_1.04.bb
index c32aa534228..57c2190cf40 100644
--- a/meta/recipes-support/lzop/lzop_1.04.bb
+++ b/meta/recipes-support/lzop/lzop_1.04.bb
@@ -12,15 +12,12 @@ LICENSE = "GPL-2.0-or-later"
 LIC_FILES_CHKSUM = "file://COPYING;md5=b234ee4d69f5fce4486a80fdaf4a4263 \
                     file://src/lzop.c;beginline=5;endline=21;md5=23d767de7754eb24b9e900b025cf7fc8"
 
-SRC_URI = "http://www.lzop.org/download/${BP}.tar.gz \
-           file://acinclude.m4 \
-          "
+SRC_URI = "http://www.lzop.org/download/${BP}.tar.gz"
 SRC_URI[sha256sum] = "7e72b62a8a60aff5200a047eea0773a8fb205caf7acbe1774d95147f305a2f41"
 
 inherit autotools
 
-do_configure:prepend () {
-    install -Dm 0644 ${UNPACKDIR}/acinclude.m4 ${S}/acinclude.m4
-}
+# Ensure we don't delete the shipped aclocal.m4
+EXTRA_AUTORECONF += "--exclude=aclocal"
 
 BBCLASSEXTEND = "native nativesdk"
-- 
2.43.0

RE: [OE-core] [PATCH 2/4] lzop: improve aclocal.m4 handling

[Peter Kjellerstedt]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: openembedded-core@lists.openembedded.org <openembedded-core@lists.openembedded.org> On Behalf Of Ross Burton via lists.openembedded.org
> Sent: den 25 februari 2026 13:37
> To: openembedded-core@lists.openembedded.org
> Subject: [OE-core] [PATCH 2/4] lzop: improve aclocal.m4 handling
> 
> This upstream has a hand-maintained aclocal.m4 which we don't want to
> delete (autotools.bbclass does this).  For some reason this was worked
> around by shipping a copy of aclocal.m4 as acinclude.m4 and dropping
> that into the build tree.
> 
> A better solution is to just exclude aclocal in EXTRA_AUTORECONF, which
> has the side-effect of not removing the file.
> 
> Signed-off-by: Ross Burton <ross.burton@arm.com>
> ---
>  meta/recipes-support/lzop/lzop_1.04.bb | 9 +++------
>  1 file changed, 3 insertions(+), 6 deletions(-)
> 
> diff --git a/meta/recipes-support/lzop/lzop_1.04.bb b/meta/recipes-support/lzop/lzop_1.04.bb
> index c32aa534228..57c2190cf40 100644
> --- a/meta/recipes-support/lzop/lzop_1.04.bb
> +++ b/meta/recipes-support/lzop/lzop_1.04.bb
> @@ -12,15 +12,12 @@ LICENSE = "GPL-2.0-or-later"
>  LIC_FILES_CHKSUM = "file://COPYING;md5=b234ee4d69f5fce4486a80fdaf4a4263 \
> 
> file://src/lzop.c;beginline=5;endline=21;md5=23d767de7754eb24b9e900b025cf7fc8"
> 
> -SRC_URI = "http://www.lzop.org/download/${BP}.tar.gz \
> -           file://acinclude.m4 \

You forgot to remove the actual acinclude.m4 file.

> -          "
> +SRC_URI = "http://www.lzop.org/download/${BP}.tar.gz"
>  SRC_URI[sha256sum] = "7e72b62a8a60aff5200a047eea0773a8fb205caf7acbe1774d95147f305a2f41"
> 
>  inherit autotools
> 
> -do_configure:prepend () {
> -    install -Dm 0644 ${UNPACKDIR}/acinclude.m4 ${S}/acinclude.m4
> -}
> +# Ensure we don't delete the shipped aclocal.m4
> +EXTRA_AUTORECONF += "--exclude=aclocal"
> 
>  BBCLASSEXTEND = "native nativesdk"
> --
> 2.43.0

//Peter

Re: [OE-core] [PATCH 2/4] lzop: improve aclocal.m4 handling

[Ross Burton]

> On 25 Feb 2026, at 18:58, Peter Kjellerstedt <peter.kjellerstedt@axis.com> wrote:
> You forgot to remove the actual acinclude.m4 file.

Whoops. v2 sent.

Thanks,
Ross

[PATCH 3/4] rxvt: improve aclocal.m4 handling

[Ross Burton]

I don't know why we copy aclocal.m4 to acinclude.m4 to avoid
autotools.bbclass deleting the upstream hand-maintained aclocal.m4, but
we do.

A neater fix is to exclude aclocal, which has the side-effect of not
deleting aclocal.m4 in do_configure.

Signed-off-by: Ross Burton <ross.burton@arm.com>
---
 meta/recipes-sato/rxvt-unicode/rxvt-unicode.inc | 7 ++-----
 1 file changed, 2 insertions(+), 5 deletions(-)

diff --git a/meta/recipes-sato/rxvt-unicode/rxvt-unicode.inc b/meta/recipes-sato/rxvt-unicode/rxvt-unicode.inc
index 2eab0d4ec4c..5a1b44a71c3 100644
--- a/meta/recipes-sato/rxvt-unicode/rxvt-unicode.inc
+++ b/meta/recipes-sato/rxvt-unicode/rxvt-unicode.inc
@@ -36,11 +36,8 @@ EXTRA_OECONF = "--enable-xim \
 PACKAGECONFIG ??= ""
 PACKAGECONFIG[startup] = "--enable-startup-notification,--disable-startup-notification,startup-notification,"
 
-do_configure:prepend () {
-	if [ ! -e ${S}/acinclude.m4 ]; then
-		cp ${S}/aclocal.m4 ${S}/acinclude.m4
-	fi
-}
+# Ensure we don't delete the shipped aclocal.m4
+EXTRA_AUTORECONF += "--exclude=aclocal"
 
 do_compile:prepend () {
 	echo '#define UTMP_FILE "${localstatedir}/run/utmp"' >> config.h
-- 
2.43.0

[PATCH 4/4] autotools: remove deletion of aclocal.m4

[Ross Burton]

We've historically[1] deleted any aclocal.m4 file in the source tree
before autoreconfing on the grounds that it is "too shy" to overwrite
aclocal.m4, so we forcibly delete the aclocal.m4 unless aclocal has been
excluded in autoreconf.

However, this shyness has been removed in autoconf 2.70[2] and autoreconf
will always call aclocal, which will rewrite the file if needed.

So, remove the explicit deletion of aclocal.m4.  I've verified that a
build of all recipes in core that use autotools have identical
aclocal.m4 files before and after this change.

[1] This code appears in oe-classic during 2011 but originated in a
    BitKeeper commit, so predates our use of git.

[2] autoconf bc7e12e7 ("autoreconf: drop support for old (< 1.8) aclocal versions")

Signed-off-by: Ross Burton <ross.burton@arm.com>
---
 meta/classes-recipe/autotools.bbclass | 7 -------
 1 file changed, 7 deletions(-)

diff --git a/meta/classes-recipe/autotools.bbclass b/meta/classes-recipe/autotools.bbclass
index bd477dc60f0..bf580086698 100644
--- a/meta/classes-recipe/autotools.bbclass
+++ b/meta/classes-recipe/autotools.bbclass
@@ -166,13 +166,6 @@ autotools_do_configure() {
 		cd ${AUTOTOOLS_SCRIPT_PATH}
 		# aclocal looks in the native sysroot by default, so tell it to also look in the target sysroot.
 		ACLOCAL="aclocal --aclocal-path=${STAGING_DATADIR}/aclocal/"
-		# autoreconf is too shy to overwrite aclocal.m4 if it doesn't look
-		# like it was auto-generated.  Work around this by blowing it away
-		# by hand, unless the package specifically asked not to run aclocal.
-		if ! echo ${EXTRA_AUTORECONF} | grep -q "aclocal"; then
-			bbnote Removing existing aclocal.m4
-			rm -f aclocal.m4
-		fi
 		if [ -e configure.in ]; then
 			CONFIGURE_AC=configure.in
 		else
-- 
2.43.0