Hi Adrian,
I've been doing some Bug of the Day triage and picked up this one. I've
prepared a debdiff fixing the FTCBFS issue.
The root cause is that the four explicit ../configure invocations in
debian/rules do not pass --host or --build. Since architecture.mk is
already included at the top of debian/rules, the DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE and
DEB_BUILD_GNU_TYPE variables are already available — they just aren't
being forwarded to configure.
Helmut's 2016 suggestion was to switch to dh_auto_configure, but that
isn't straightforward given the multi-build-dir layout (obj-db,
obj-sqlite, obj-tokyocabinet, obj-doc each run separate configure
invocations). The fix is to add --host and --build explicitly to each
call.
I've verified the fix at the configure level: without --host, autoconf
determines cross_compiling=no and locks in the native toolchain. With
--host=$(DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE), it correctly sets cross_compiling=yes and
targets the declared host architecture. The package builds cleanly with
the patch applied (lintian: one pre-existing warning, national-encoding
in the French FAQ — not introduced by this change).
The debdiff (1.2.5-1 → 1.2.5-1.1) is inlined below.
If you'd prefer to apply the fix yourself and upload, that's great —
please feel free to use this debdiff. If not, I'd like to arrange an
NMU to DELAYED/10 via a sponsor (I'm a new contributor and don't have
upload rights yet). Either way, this bug has been open for nearly a
decade and CrossQA still shows failures — would be good to get it
closed.
I'm also noting a separate issue for a follow-up: debian/watch is broken
(the http://sf.net/bogofilter/ URL pattern no longer matches — upstream
files are now at sourceforge.net/projects/bogofilter/files/bogofilter-stable/
in .tar.xz format). Happy to file a separate bug for that if useful.
Regards,
James Montgomery
--- debdiff bogofilter 1.2.5-1 → 1.2.5-1.1 ---
diff -Nru bogofilter-1.2.5/debian/changelog bogofilter-1.2.5/debian/changelog
--- bogofilter-1.2.5/debian/changelog 2021-02-10 10:00:56.000000000 +0000
+++ bogofilter-1.2.5/debian/changelog 2026-05-04 23:24:55.000000000 +0000
@@ -1,3 +1,11 @@
+bogofilter (1.2.5-1.1) unstable; urgency=low
+
+ * Non-maintainer upload.
+ * Fix FTCBFS: add --host and --build flags to all configure invocations.
+ (Closes: #837877)
+
+ -- James Montgomery <james_montgomery@disroot.org> Mon, 04 May 2026 23:24:55 +0000
+
bogofilter (1.2.5-1) unstable; urgency=high
* New upstream release. (Closes: #980328)
diff -Nru bogofilter-1.2.5/debian/rules bogofilter-1.2.5/debian/rules
--- bogofilter-1.2.5/debian/rules 2018-03-09 19:30:06.000000000 +0000
+++ bogofilter-1.2.5/debian/rules 2026-05-04 23:24:55.000000000 +0000
@@ -19,12 +19,15 @@
override_dh_auto_configure:
mkdir -p $(CURDIR)/obj-doc
- cd $(CURDIR)/obj-doc && ../configure
+ cd $(CURDIR)/obj-doc && ../configure \
+ --host=$(DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE) --build=$(DEB_BUILD_GNU_TYPE)
mkdir $(CURDIR)/obj-db $(CURDIR)/obj-sqlite
cd $(CURDIR)/obj-db && ../configure --with-database=db \
+ --host=$(DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE) --build=$(DEB_BUILD_GNU_TYPE) \
--prefix=/usr --mandir=\$${prefix}/share/man --sysconfdir=/etc \
AWK=awk $(shell dpkg-buildflags --export=configure)
cd $(CURDIR)/obj-sqlite && ../configure --with-database=sqlite \
+ --host=$(DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE) --build=$(DEB_BUILD_GNU_TYPE) \
--program-suffix=-sqlite --prefix=/usr --mandir=\$${prefix}/share/man \
--sysconfdir=/etc AWK=awk $(shell dpkg-buildflags --export=configure) && \
sed -i 's/^INTEGRITY_TESTS.*/INTEGRITY_TESTS=t.lock1/' src/tests/Makefile
@@ -32,6 +35,7 @@
mkdir $(CURDIR)/obj-tokyocabinet; \
cd $(CURDIR)/obj-tokyocabinet && ../configure \
--with-database=tokyocabinet --program-suffix=-tokyocabinet \
+ --host=$(DEB_HOST_GNU_TYPE) --build=$(DEB_BUILD_GNU_TYPE) \
--prefix=/usr --mandir=\$${prefix}/share/man --sysconfdir=/etc AWK=awk \
$(shell dpkg-buildflags --export=configure); \
fi