possibly undefined macro: AC_MSG_FAILURE

Question

Trying to create an OpenSSL engine based on a demo code which is an example of MD5 engine. The readme file says that i have to use the following commands in order to build the engine:

$ autoreconf -i
$ ./configure
$ make

So far so good. The problem is that when I'm executing autoreconf -i an error is generated:

configure.ac:18: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_MSG_FAILURE
      If this token and others are legitimate, please use m4_pattern_allow.
      See the Autoconf documentation.
autoreconf: /usr/bin/autoconf failed with exit status: 1

I have to mention that I have installed all the needed tools (autoconf, automake, libtool, pkg-config) and I exhausted all the results on the first page in Google search.
If I'm using the command autoreconf -vi, the error doesn't show up, but the Makefile is not generated so I can't complete the build process.
My OS is Ubuntu 14.04 64-bit, OpenSSL version is 1.0.1f 6 Jan 2014.
What I'm doing wrong? What is the problem?

OpenSSL does not use Autotools and friends. They have their own build system. See Compilation and Installation on the OpenSSL wiki. — jww
One of the easiest examples of an ENGINE is Intel's RDRAND engine located at <openssl src>/crypto/engine/eng_rdrand.c. — jww

Diego Elio Pettenò Diego Elio Pettenò · Accepted Answer · 2016-03-05T00:26:55

This is an unfortunately common problem with autoconf, where the error is reported for the wrong macro. The easy thing to do is to look for the most-recent macro called before AC_MSG_FAILURE, which in the linked code would be AX_CHECK_OPENSSL.

AX_ prefix is used by Autoconf Archive macros, which gives you an idea where to find it.

I would suggest creating a m4 directory in repository of the engine and copying the right macro file from acarchive into it, then use autoreconf -fi -I m4 to have it look for the macro file there.

possibly undefined macro: AC_MSG_FAILURE

1 Answers