Building elfutils fails

[icedieler]

Because of this bug in elfutils I cannot build elfutils in bob on Debian forky/sid. The error is

/bob/cb6a52b92c5b1f939727916cea479579e9e0249c/workspace/libdwfl/link_map.c: In function 'report_r_debug':
/bob/cb6a52b92c5b1f939727916cea479579e9e0249c/workspace/libdwfl/link_map.c:434:20: error: variable 'n' set but not used [-Werror=unused-but-set-variable]
  434 |        const char *n = NULL;
      |                    ^
cc1: all warnings being treated as errors
make[2]: *** [Makefile:751: link_map.o] Error 1
make[2]: *** Waiting for unfinished jobs....
make[1]: *** [Makefile:625: all-recursive] Error 1
make: *** [Makefile:540: all] Error 2
Step failed with return status 2; Command: make -j "${MAKE_JOBS-$(nproc)}" "$@"
Call stack (most recent call first)
    #0: Class  make, layer basement, line 9, in makeParallel
    #1: Class  autotools, layer basement, line 85, in autotoolsBuild
    #2: Recipe libs::elfutils#1, layer basement-gnu-linux, line 3, in main
Build error: ./dev/build/libs/elfutils-libelf-dev/x86_64-bob_compat-linux-gnu/1/build.sh returned with 2
Failed package: sef-rpi4/vn1/vm-linux-modules/libs::elfutils-libelf-dev
You may resume at this point with '--resume' after fixing the error.

The elfutils project has a fix since October 2025 however the project hasn't made a new release yet.

I am not sure why this error only surfaces now while I have done successful builds in the past.

Could you please give me some guidance on what is the best way to solve this?

[jkloetzke]

Thanks for the pointer to the upstream fix. I simply cherry-picked it.

The library was updated recently in basement by this pull request. The underlying problem was that the host-compat toolchain does not define some constant in its libc. This generates a warning and the build fails due to Werror being forced by the project. It does not happen with the gcc 14 cross compiling toolchains. Anyway, thankfully the fix applied cleanly.