[XeTeX] depcomp erorr when building (and workaround)

[Arthur Reutenauer]

  Belated response:

On Wed, Sep 07, 2016 at 01:20:27PM -0400, Scott Kostyshak wrote:
> I run the following commands:
> 
> git clone git://git.code.sf.net/p/xetex/code xetex-code &&
> cd xetex-code &&
> ./build.sh
> 
> This gives the following error:
> 
> /bin/bash:
> ../../../../source/texk/web2c/web2c/../../../build-aux/depcomp: No such
> file or directory
> 
> I suppose this has to do with autoconf versions or something like that.

  The origin of the problem seems to be libtool, specifically the
utility libtoolize; I was able to reproduce the problem with libtool
version 2.4.6 (from 2015), while an older machine with libtool 2.4.2
(from 2011) didn’t have the issue.  Compilation was also fine on the
newer machine with libtool 2.4.2.

  By trial and error I found that the following simple line near the top
of configure.ac did the trick:

	AC_REQUIRE_AUX_FILE([depcomp])

  I can’t really claim to know what I’m doing, but it seems to work.
I’ve committed that line to the repository, so that compilation should
work with a fresh copy; alternatively, in an old working directly, I’ve
found that

	git clean -dfx

did the trick of restoring a clean slate.  Then you of course need to
run git pull.

	Best,

		Arthur