@APP_INDICATOR_CFLAGS@: No such file or directory

Question

(Migrated from Ubuntu forums.)

I'm somewhat new at building, so I'm hoping this is an easy explanation.

Downloaded Nautilus source to patch for transparent background.

Patching went well and fine.

During building I received this:

Making all in libnautilus-private
make[2]: Entering directory `/home/[x]/nautilus-2.32.0/libnautilus-private'
  GEN    nautilus-marshal.h
  GEN    nautilus-marshal-guts.c
  CC     nautilus-autorun.lo
gcc: @APP_INDICATOR_CFLAGS@: No such file or directory
make[2]: *** [nautilus-autorun.lo] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory `/home/[x]/nautilus-2.32.0/libnautilus-private'
make[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory `/home/[x]/nautilus-2.32.0'
make: *** [all] Error 2

Answer 1

I'm not very good at debugging build issues either but here goes.

I can tell you that this is caused by the Debian patch 89_use_application_indicator.patch which references https://bugs.edge.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/nautilus/+bug/497880

Apparently @APP_INDICATOR_CFLAGS@ from libnautilus-private/Makefile.am is not properly substituted with the output from pkg-config --cflags --libs appindicator-0.1. It's likely that after applying the distribution patches you forgot to run autoreconf.

Simply run autoreconf and run make again. This will update configure.in to substitute APP_INDICATOR_CFLAGS.