Comment 0 for bug 1999897

The bionic upstream branch of update-notifier[1] currently FTBFSs.

Compared to the source package in the ubuntu bionic archive, it's missing the generated autoconf files:
$ git diff pkg/ubuntu/bionic-devel..upstream/bionic|diffstat|grep -v /po
 Makefile.in | 808 ---
 aclocal.m4 | 2290 ----------
 b/.gitignore | 31
 b/debian/changelog | 10
 b/debian/control | 2
 compile | 347 -
 configure | 9127 -------------------------------------------
 data/Makefile.in | 649 ---
 depcomp | 791 ---
 install-sh | 508 --
 missing | 215 -
 pixmaps/16x16/Makefile.in | 494 --
 pixmaps/22x22/Makefile.in | 494 --
 pixmaps/24x24/Makefile.in | 494 --
 pixmaps/48x48/Makefile.in | 494 --
 pixmaps/Makefile.in | 617 --
 pixmaps/scalable/Makefile.in | 494 --
 po/Makefile.in.in | 221 -
 src/Makefile.in | 715 ---
 ui/Makefile.in | 494 --
 153 files changed, 17378 insertions(+), 32241 deletions(-)

All other upstream branches in update-notifier have those files removed, but d/rules was adapted to generate them:
$ git diff upstream/bionic..upstream/focal -- debian/rules
diff --git a/debian/rules b/debian/rules
index c67232ec..73fe23e5 100755
--- a/debian/rules
+++ b/debian/rules
@@ -3,7 +3,15 @@ export CFLAGS += -Wall -g -O$(if $(findstring noopt,$(DEB_BUILD_OPTIONS)),0,2)
 export LDFLAGS += -Wl,-z,defs -Wl,-O1 -Wl,--as-needed

 %:
- dh $@ --with python3
+ dh $@ --with python3 --with autoreconf
+
+override_dh_autoreconf:
+ NOCONFIGURE=1 dh_autoreconf ./autogen.sh
+
+override_dh_auto_configure:
+ dh_auto_configure -- --libdir=/usr/lib

 override_dh_auto_test:
        cd tests && python3 test_package-data-downloader.py
+ cd tests && python3 test_motd.py
+

We should either generate these files at build time, like the other upstream branches, or include them in the bionic repository, like the current package in the bionic ubuntu archive has it[1]

1. https://git.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/update-notifier/tree/?h=ubuntu/bionic-devel