Subject: Re: bug#67539: GNU Automake 1.16.5 FAILS one test objc-megademo

From: Nick Bowler <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2023 22:45:05 -0500

On 2023-11-30 21:46, Karl Berry wrote:
> Hi Dennis,
> 
>      libtool: compile: unable to infer tagged configuration
> 
> Thanks for the report.
> 
> As you surmise, apparently this needs to be reported to
> libtool. (Although afaik libtool is currently unmaintained, so I don't
> know when or if anything will get fixed.) At least, I have no idea what
> to do about, or even work around, that error :(.

This could still be (partially) an Automake issue, since the problem 
appears partially related to how Automake is calling libtool from the 
build rules (it is missing the --tag option), and I think those are 
coming from Automake.

However it looks like there is no tag defined for Objective C[1] 
(presumably it would be --tag=OBJC).  Adding this option does appear to 
make things "work" in the sense that libtool just complains about the 
unknown tag but then proceeds to actually do stuff, rather than exiting 
outright with a fatal error.

Interestingly the libtool manual also says "If [libtool] can't infer a 
tag, then it defaults to the configuration for the C language", which is 
clearly not the case (it seems what actually happens is that if libtool 
can't infer a tag then it exits with a fatal error).  So I wonder if
this is actually a regression in libtool.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/manual/libtool.html#Tags

Cheers,
   Nick