Arch Linux User Repository

No worries. I'd say by the look of it, the most likely culprit is the PATH variable on your system. I think pikaur is probably not getting the "right" PATH variable contents (or might be resetting it) and hence can't find the pod2man binary where it is.

@marcool04 Thank you for the fast response.

I have little knowledge about the AUR and building best practices and am using pikaur to install the few AUR packages that I actually require. Thank you for pointing me to the clean chroot article.

I had base-devel already installed, so I was just blind regarding perl being installed. But pod2man only got available in the path after reinstalling the perl package. That is all my local setup, so I have to investigate the reason myself.

Building without clean chroot via makepkg -fsr works correctly; building inside a clean chroot via pkgctl build works as well. I have tested both after deleting the symlink I created previously. Thus, it seems to be a pikaur issue.

@seyfahni I think something is a bit strange with your system. In a clean chroot, the meson setup script finds pod2man in /usr/bin/core_perl/pod2man just fine:

Program pod2man found: YES (/usr/bin/core_perl/pod2man)

Are you building in a clean chroot? [1]

Technically, perl is indeed a make dependency for this package, but as it's an AUR package, that building and installing PKGBUILDs requires that one install base-devel [2] which pulls in automake and autoconf, hence perl, then I don't think it's necessary really to add this as a makedep.

[1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/DeveloperWiki:Building_in_a_clean_chroot

[2] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Arch_User_Repository#Getting_started

Build of this package failed because pod2man executable could not be found. Thus I installed the perl package, but still got the same error even though it was now available in the path at: /usr/bin/core_perl/pod2man

To make the build work I had to create a symlink: ln -s /usr/bin/core_perl/pod2man /usr/bin/pod2man

+ exec meson setup --prefix /usr --libexecdir lib --sbindir bin --buildtype plain --auto-features enabled --wrap-mode nodownload -D b_pie=true -D python.bytecompile=1 fprintd-clients-git build -D pam_modules_dir=/usr/lib/security
The Meson build system
Version: 1.10.0
Source dir: /build/fprintd-clients-git/src/fprintd-clients-git
Build dir: /build/fprintd-clients-git/src/build
Build type: native build
Project name: fprintd
Project version: 1.90.1
C compiler for the host machine: cc (gcc 15.2.1 "cc (GCC) 15.2.1 20251112")
C linker for the host machine: cc ld.bfd 2.45.1
Host machine cpu family: x86_64
Host machine cpu: x86_64
Compiler for C supports arguments -fno-strict-aliasing: YES

[clip: more supported compiler arguments]

Compiler for C supports arguments -Wunused: YES
fprintd-clients-git/meson.build:68: WARNING: Consider using the built-in warning_level option instead of using "-Wall".
Found pkg-config: YES (/usr/bin/pkg-config) 2.5.1
Run-time dependency glib-2.0 found: YES 2.86.3
Run-time dependency gio-2.0 found: YES 2.86.3
Run-time dependency gmodule-2.0 found: YES 2.86.3
Run-time dependency libfprint-2 found: YES 1.94.9
Run-time dependency polkit-gobject-1 found: YES 127
Run-time dependency dbus-1 found: YES 1.16.2
Run-time dependency dbus-glib-1 found: YES 0.114
Run-time dependency libsystemd found: YES 259
Has header "security/pam_modules.h" : YES
Library pam found: YES
Program pod2man found: NO

fprintd-clients-git/meson.build:84:10: ERROR: Program 'pod2man' not found or not executable

Compiles fine in a clean, up to date chroot for me, with latets meson which is 1.4.0-4.

==> Building in chroot for [extra] (x86_64)...                                                                                           
==> Synchronizing chroot copy [/var/lib/archbuild/extra-x86_64/root] -> [mark]...done                                                    
==> Making package: fprintd-clients-git 1.90.1.r2.g54e56d6-6 (Sun 28 Apr 2024 05:21:40 PM CEST)

[clip]

==> Starting build()...                                                                                                                  
+ exec meson setup --prefix /usr --libexecdir lib --sbindir bin --buildtype plain --auto-features enabled --wrap-mode nodownload -D b_pie
=true -D python.bytecompile=1 fprintd-clients-git build -D pam_modules_dir=/usr/lib/security                                             
The Meson build system                                                                                                                   
Version: 1.4.0                                                                                                                           
Source dir: /build/fprintd-clients-git/src/fprintd-clients-git                                                                           
Build dir: /build/fprintd-clients-git/src/build                                                                                          
Build type: native build                                                                                                                 
Project name: fprintd                                                                                                                    
Project version: 1.90.1

[clip]

==> Leaving fakeroot environment.                                                                                                        
==> Finished making: fprintd-clients-git 1.90.1.r2.g54e56d6-6 (Sun Apr 28 17:21:59 2024)

Failing using a clean chroot yourself, maybe try with a fresh clone of this AUR repo, or clear cache of your AUR helper if you use one?

Building fails due to issues with meson. Downgrading meson to 1.3.0-1 worked for me.

I had to comment out to ignore the systemd service unit file like in the patch below:

diff --git a/data/meson.build b/data/meson.build
index d305c89..805e597 100644
--- a/data/meson.build
+++ b/data/meson.build
@@ -11,15 +11,15 @@
     #install_dir: dbus_service_dir,
 #)

-configure_file(
-    configuration: configuration_data({
-        'libexecdir': fprintd_installdir,
-    }),
-    input: 'fprintd.service.in',
-    output: 'fprintd.service',
-    install: true,
-    install_dir: systemd_unit_dir,
-)
+#configure_file(
+    #configuration: configuration_data({
+        #'libexecdir': fprintd_installdir,
+    #}),
+    #input: 'fprintd.service.in',
+    #output: 'fprintd.service',
+    #install: true,
+    #install_dir: systemd_unit_dir,
+#)

 polkit_policy = 'net.reactivated.fprint.device.policy'
 polkit_policy_target = i18n.merge_file(

to avoid the error message (conflicting with open-fprintd.service) below:

Feb 08 14:57:45 archlinux systemd[1]: fprintd.service: Two services allocated for the same bus name net.reactivated.Fprint, refusing operation.

@j.r I confirm that the latest version builds successfully for me too, without the dependency on pod2man.

Sorry for the false alarm, not sure what happened.

I have confirmed I cloud build the package! Now open-fprintd is working fine!