m4 problem in autoreconf

[VictorEijkhout]

configure.ac:452: error: m4_defn: undefined macro: LT_PACKAGE_VERSION
m4/libtool.m4:40: LT_PREREQ is expanded from...
configure.ac:452: the top level
autom4te: error: /work/00434/eijkhout/m4/installation-m4-1.4.19-milan-gcc13/bin/m4 failed with exit status: 1
aclocal: error: /work/00434/eijkhout/autoconf/installation-autoconf-2.72-milan-gcc13/bin/autom4te failed with exit status: 1
autoreconf: error: aclocal failed with exit status: 1

I have compiler m4/autoconf/automake/libtool from source since my system did not have the latest versions you requested. Did I miss something in the setup? The Gnu pages seem to indicate that configure/make on each of these should be enough.

[wkliao]

If building PnetCDF using its official releases, you do not need to run autoreconf.
Running command configure is sufficient.
Running autoreconf is only required when building from a clone of GitHub repo.

[VictorEijkhout]

Right. I'm now able to build the official release.

But I'm still wondering (just a little) where this problem with installing from a git clone comes from.

[wkliao]

Maybe your libtool version is older than 2.4.6.
Please check with command "libtool --version".

[VictorEijkhout]

libtool --version
libtool (GNU libtool) 2.4.7
Written by Gordon Matzigkeit, 1996

Copyright (C) 2014 Free Software Foundation, Inc

Besides, it says the macro is undefined. I tried setting it as an environment variable but that didn't help.

[wkliao]

I tested it with libtool 2.4.6 only. Maybe there is a conflict when using 2.4.7.
Could you give 2.4.6 a try?

[wkliao]

I have not encountered this error until recently when using a newer version of libtool.
The fix is to first delete file m4/ltversion.m4 before running command autoreconf -i.

The error is most likely because file m4/ltversion.m4 is a residue created from a
previous run of autoreconf -i that used an older version of libtool. Deleting this
file will force libtool to copy over the correct one.