crossfire fails to cross build from source for two distinct reasons.

The immediate failure arises from AC_CHECK_FILE. This macro is meant to
check for files on the host system, but a cross build has not access to
it. Therefore all uses of AC_CHECK_FILE fail unless the result is
seeded. crossfire uses it to check for files on the build system
however. It really should be using test -e instead.

The second problem resides in CF_CHECK_VISIBILITY. It uses AC_RUN_IFELSE
while having added -Werror to CFLAGS and removes -Werror in both the yes
and the no path. Unfortunately, the cross path does not remove -Werror
and from then on the compiler flags include -Werror breaking other
checks such as AC_CHECK_FUNCS for strdup. The easy path here is
restoring CFLAGS in the cross path, but the program under test always
returns 0, so running it isn't actually necessary. Turning it into
AC_LINK_IFELSE should be sufficient and completely removes the cross
code path.

Both changes are applicable upstream and benefit other distributions
such as PtxDist or Yocto. Please consider applying the patch attached
for your convenience.

Helmut

We believe that the bug you reported is fixed in the latest version of
crossfire, which is due to be installed in the Debian FTP archive.

A summary of the changes between this version and the previous one is
attached.

Thank you for reporting the bug, which will now be closed.  If you
have further comments please address them to 1119125@bugs.debian.org,
and the maintainer will reopen the bug report if appropriate.

Debian distribution maintenance software
pp.
Bastian Germann <bage@debian.org> (supplier of updated crossfire package)

(This message was generated automatically at their request; if you
believe that there is a problem with it please contact the archive
administrators by mailing ftpmaster@ftp-master.debian.org)
Format: 1.8
Date: Thu, 06 Aug 2026 21:37:25 +0200
Source: crossfire
Architecture: source
Version: 1.75.0-9.1
Distribution: unstable
Urgency: medium
Maintainer: Kari Pahula <kaol@debian.org>
Changed-By: Bastian Germann <bage@debian.org>
Closes: 1117613 1119125
Changes:
 crossfire (1.75.0-9.1) unstable; urgency=medium
 .
   * Non-maintainer upload
   * Move Vcs to debian namespace
   * Drop postinstall rules targeting ancient versions
   * Drop cfdb_convert script for databases from python2 era (Closes: #1117613)
   * Fix cross build (Closes: #1119125)
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 b875e1fc423ad950bdc40e4fca3eb0d983defe4c 12320 crossfire_1.75.0-9.1.debian.tar.xz
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