Trying to compile slapd on cygwin, what does this automake error mean?

Question

I'm trying to compile a very old verion of slapd (the LDAP server) on cygwin. Previously this ran on a Linux box, but for reasons beyond my control it must be made to work on a Windows server. It has been suggested that we might use cygwin to compile up the source-code.

Unfortunately the build fails during "configure" with the error message:

checking how to run the C preprocessor... cc -E
checking for gcc... (cached) cc
checking whether the C compiler (cc   ) works... no
configure: error: installation or configuration problem: C compiler cannot creat
e executables.

The last few lines of config.log are:

configure: failed program was:
#line 2822 "configure"
#include "confdefs.h"

int main() {
return __EMX__;
; return 0; }
configure:2845: checking how to run the C preprocessor
configure:2866: cc -E  conftest.c >/dev/null 2>conftest.out
configure:2950: checking for gcc
configure:3063: checking whether the C compiler (cc   ) works
configure:3079: cc -o conftest    conftest.c  1>&5
/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-cygwin/3.4.4/../../../../i686-pc-cygwin/bin/ld: cannot find
 -luser32
collect2: ld returned 1 exit status
configure: failed program was:

#line 3074 "configure"
#include "confdefs.h"

main(){return(0);}

UPDATE: This is a win32 computer - cygwin does not included a shared-object called user32, but Windows XP does include an object called user32.dll - any idea if this might be what the linker is looking for?

UPDATE2: w32api is already installed, (3.13-1) - I note that there is a user32.lib as part of visual-stuido 2003 .Net - is there a way to make GCC in Cygwin use this?

Answer 1

After much trial & error I found the correct answer for this problem: The reason for this error is that the Cygwin environment was not set up correctly.

The login-user on a domain, and so the /etc/passwd & /etc/group files were not set up correctly by default. The solution was to make a local user-account and then re-build the passwd and groups files.

After that, GCC could build just fine.

Sounds crazy, I know.

Answer 2

The root cause seems to be

/usr/lib/gcc/i686-pc-cygwin/3.4.4/../../../../i686-pc-cygwin/bin/ld: cannot find -luser32

This is either a problem with your cygwin installation, or the configure scripts are to old to recognise and handle the installation.

Answer 3

If -luser32 is failing, try installing the w32api Cygwin package.