dpkg-buildpackage unrecognized option: `--runstatedir=/run'

Question

I wanted to build vim package for debian from source and I'm getting this error when running command dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot

   dh_clean
 dpkg-source -b .
dpkg-source: info: using source format '3.0 (quilt)'
dpkg-source: info: building vim using existing ./vim_8.2.5106.orig.tar.gz
dpkg-source: info: using patch list from debian/patches/series
dpkg-source: warning: newly created empty file 'src/auto/config.h' will not be represented in diff
dpkg-source: info: building vim in vim_8.2.5106-1.debian.tar.xz
dpkg-source: info: building vim in vim_8.2.5106-1.dsc
 debian/rules build
dh build
   dh_update_autotools_config
   dh_autoreconf
   dh_auto_configure
        ./configure --build=i686-linux-gnu --prefix=/usr --includedir=\${prefix}/include --mandir=\${prefix}/share/man --infodir=\${prefix}/share/info --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var --disable-silent-rules --libdir=\${prefix}/lib/i386-linux-gnu --libexecdir=\${prefix}/lib/i386-linux-gnu --runstatedir=/run --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking
configure: error: unrecognized option: `--runstatedir=/run'
Try `auto/configure --help' for more information
dh_auto_configure: ./configure --build=i686-linux-gnu --prefix=/usr --includedir=\${prefix}/include --mandir=\${prefix}/share/man --infodir=\${prefix}/share/info --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var --disable-silent-rules --libdir=\${prefix}/lib/i386-linux-gnu --libexecdir=\${prefix}/lib/i386-linux-gnu --runstatedir=/run --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking returned exit code 1
make: *** [debian/rules:18: build] Error 2
dpkg-buildpackage: error: debian/rules build subprocess returned exit status 2

If i understand this correctly the problem is in a flag `--runstatedir=/run' that is unrecognized. How can i solve this issue?

Answer 1

Before continuing have you installed properly all build dependencies ?

Have a look at : https://www.debian.org/doc/manuals/maint-guide/dreq.en.html#control and more especially at the Build-Depends section.

In parallel you can also launch the command dpkg-depcheck -d ./configure to find some missing packages.

Vim package is regularly updated and last commit was 2w ago so I would be very astonished that it won’t compile.

Have a look at: https://salsa.debian.org/vim-team/vim

Answer 2

I suppose you're backporting vim from debian source of a newer distribution to an older distribution.

Then it's caused by debhelper->dh_auto_configure adding this parameter. dh_auto_configure runs <source_dir>/configure with this parameter. <source_dir>/configure is generated by autoconf, in such case, likely debhelper->autoreconf, which calls autoreconf->autoconf to generate <source_dir>/configure. In case the version of autoconf is not up-to-date enough, the generated <source_dir>/configure lacks --runstatedir=/run support, and hence you see this log:

   dh_autoreconf
   dh_auto_configure
        ./configure --build=i686-linux-gnu --prefix=/usr --includedir=\${prefix}/include --mandir=\${prefix}/share/man --infodir=\${prefix}/share/info --sysconfdir=/etc --localstatedir=/var --disable-silent-rules --libdir=\${prefix}/lib/i386-linux-gnu --libexecdir=\${prefix}/lib/i386-linux-gnu --runstatedir=/run --disable-maintainer-mode --disable-dependency-tracking
configure: error: unrecognized option: `--runstatedir=/run'

To solve it, you can upgrade your autoconf package version, but obviously that's not what you always want to do (you may have to backport a lot of dependencies). So instead, just don't let dh_auto_configure pass this argument:
You can see this perl code in /usr/share/perl5/Debian/Debhelper/Buildsystem/autoconf.pm:

        push @opts, "--runstatedir=/run" if not compat(10);

So just modify debian/compat in extracted debian source of vim, lower its value to 10, and build again, now dh_auto_configure should never try passing --runstatedir=/run when calling <source_dir>/configure any more.