Re: [ft-devel] `brew install --with-qt ttfautohint` fails

[Werner LEMBERG]

> as others may have noticed, e.g. see
> https://discourse.brew.sh/t/trouble-installing-ttfautohint/2084, it
> is currently impossible to successfully `brew install --with-qt
> ttfautohint`, at least on the latest macOS 10.13.6 and up-to-date
> homebrew.
> 
> The build fails with a configure error:
> 
>   configure: error:
>     Calling /usr/local/opt/qt/bin/qmake -spec macx-g++ failed.
> 
> I was eventually able to build by applying the following patch to
> the m4/autoroll.m4 file:
> 
> https://gist.github.com/anthrotype/645a3fb882885affcee7fbc38b8c7844

Thanks.  However, there's a better solution, already in

  https://github.com/tsuna/autotroll/blob/master/build-aux/autotroll.m4

I forgot to copy this to the ttfautohint git repository, now done.

> The patch tells qmake to use `macx-clang` instead of `macx-g++` as
> its spec.

With the new `autotroll.m4' version, you can override the Qt5 specfile
with

  QMAKESPEC='macx-clang' ./configure ...

> I'm not sure why the latter doesn't work any more...

It seems that brew has switched from g++ to clang, no longer providing
spec files for g++.

> There is another thing that I had to do in order to successfully
> build.  I had to modify the ttfautohint.rb formula make sure that
> the GNU sed is used instead of the (BSD?) version /usr/bin/sed that
> macOS ships with.
> 
> For some reasons, the same m4/autoroll.m4 is attempting to parse the
> output of qmake --version using some sed command that doesn't work
> with the Apple sed command, and thus the configure script is failing
> to detect the current Qt's version.

Depending on GNU sed is bad.  However, I can't quickly see a problem
with the sed expression.  Can you show the error message?  And can you
insert some tracing to `autotroll.m4' to show the value of `sed
$qmake_version_sed' and `$QMAKE --version'?

  qmake_version_sed=['/^.*\([0-9]\+\.[0-9]\+\.[0-9]\+\).*$/!d;s//\1/']
  at_cv_QT_VERSION=`$QMAKE --version 2>&1 \
                    | sed "$qmake_version_sed"`])
 
> Here's my updated ttfautohint.rb formula which includes both the
> qmake -spec patch [...]

Thanks!

> Installing without --HEAD doesn't seem to work, probably because the
> patch is not applied in that case.  I don't know.  I'm not very
> familiar with homebrew.

Me neither :-/ I'll check the whole issue within the next few days; if
time permits, I'll do a new ttfautohint release.


    Werner