Cygwin and "failed to run aclocal: No such file or directory"

Question

I'm trying to test our Autotools stuff on Cygwin. When I open a prompt:

$ autoreconf --install --force
Can't exec "aclocal": No such file or directory at /usr/share/autoconf/Autom4te/FileUtils.pm line 326.
autoreconf-2.69: failed to run aclocal: No such file or directory

I re-ran the Cygwin package manager and verified autoconf, automake and libtool were installed. There is no package aclocal to install.

Searching is not returning useful hits in the context of Cygwin.

What is the problem, and how do I fix it?

Answer 1

So it looks like it is not enough to install Autoconf 2.69, Automake 1.15 and Libtool. There are other packages that need to be installed, but Cygwin does not install them.

First, I needed the package called automake: wrapper for multiple versions of Automake. Second, I needed the package called libtool: generic library support script.

The package called autoconf: wrapper for multiple versions of Autoconf was already installed, so it did not need to be installed.

If the Autools package needs them, then it should probably install them when users select packages like Autoconf 2.69 and Automake 1.15.