Building libselinux on Debian 12 fails with missing header (sepol/sepol.h)

[Krotti83]

Hi!

I'm trying to build libselinux on my Debian 12 system. But it fails, because of a missing header.
Need it for building the GNU C library (glibc v2.40) with SELinux support.

$ make DESTDIR=/cross/gnu/202410
[...]
cc  -O2 -Werror -Wall -Wextra -Wfloat-equal -Wformat=2 -Winit-self -Wmissing-format-attribute -Wmissing-noreturn -Wmissing-prototypes -Wnull-dereference -Wpointer-arith -Wshadow -Wstrict-prototypes -Wundef -Wunused -Wwrite-strings -fno-common -I/cross/gnu/202410/usr/include -I../include -D_GNU_SOURCE -DNO_ANDROID_BACKEND -DUSE_PCRE2 -DPCRE2_CODE_UNIT_WIDTH=8 -DHAVE_REALLOCARRAY  -c -o load_policy.o load_policy.c
load_policy.c:15:10: fatal error: sepol/sepol.h: No such file or directory
   15 | #include <sepol/sepol.h>
      |          ^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
compilation terminated.
make[2]: *** [Makefile:176: load_policy.o] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory '/home/jk/Projects/SELinux/src/libselinux/src'
make[1]: *** [Makefile:48: all] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/jk/Projects/SELinux/src/libselinux'
make: *** [Makefile:40: all] Error 1
$

How can I fix this issue? Thanks in advance!

[cgzones]

Either install the headers via the package libsepol-dev or build on the in-tree libsepol version by running

make DESTDIR=~/destdir SUBDIRS='libsepol libselinux' install

[Krotti83]

Hi @cgzones!

Sorry for my late response. I have tried the compilation. But get another error now:

$ make DESTDIR=/cross/gnu/202410 SUBDIRS='libsepol libselinux'
make[1]: Entering directory '/home/jk/Projects/SELinux/libselinux-3.7/libsepol'
make -C src 
make[2]: Entering directory '/home/jk/Projects/SELinux/libselinux-3.7/libsepol/src'
cc  -O2 -Werror -Wall -Wextra -Wfloat-equal -Wformat=2 -Winit-self -Wmissing-format-attribute -Wmissing-noreturn -Wmissing-prototypes -Wnull-dereference -Wpointer-arith -Wshadow -Wstrict-prototypes -Wundef -Wunused -Wwrite-strings -fno-common -I/cross/gnu/202410/usr/include -I. -I../include -D_GNU_SOURCE -I../cil/include -DHAVE_REALLOCARRAY -fPIC -c -o assertion.o assertion.c
[...]
cc -O2 -Werror -Wall -Wextra -Wfloat-equal -Wformat=2 -Winit-self -Wmissing-format-attribute -Wmissing-noreturn -Wmissing-prototypes -Wnull-dereference -Wpointer-arith -Wshadow -Wstrict-prototypes -Wundef -Wunused -Wwrite-strings -fno-common -I/cross/gnu/202410/usr/include -I../include  -L/cross/gnu/202410/usr/lib -L/cross/gnu/202410/usr/lib -L../src  sepol_validate_transition.c  -lsepol -o sepol_validate_transition
make[2]: Leaving directory '/home/jk/Projects/SELinux/libselinux-3.7/libsepol/utils'
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/jk/Projects/SELinux/libselinux-3.7/libsepol'
make[1]: Entering directory '/home/jk/Projects/SELinux/libselinux-3.7/libselinux'
/bin/sh: 2: cd: can't cd to libsepol
make[1]: *** [Makefile:48: all] Error 1
make[1]: Leaving directory '/home/jk/Projects/SELinux/libselinux-3.7/libselinux'
make: *** [Makefile:40: all] Error 1
$ 

Tried if with release libselinux-3.7 and also the latest from main branch. Both the same error.

[cgzones]

Oh, the SUBDIRS variable gets passed to child make invocations.
You can either build everything by omitting SUBDIRS or edit the variable in the root Makefile.