autoconf @2.71_1: 'help2man' is missing on your system (Linux)

[harens (Haren S)]

> uname -a
Linux raspberrypi 5.10.52-v7+ #1441 SMP Tue Aug 3 18:10:09 BST 2021 armv7l GNU/Linux

echo '# Automatically Generated: do not edit this file' >lib/autoscan/autoscan.list
/opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_local_var_macports_sources_github.com_macports_macports-ports_devel_autoconf/autoconf/work/autoconf-2.71/build-aux/missing: line 81: help2man: command not found
sed '/^[#]/!q' ./lib/autoscan/autoscan.pre >>lib/autoscan/autoscan.list
( \
  sed -n '/^[^#]/p' ./lib/autoscan/autoscan.pre; \
  autom4te_perllibdir='.'/lib AUTOM4TE_CFG='lib/autom4te.cfg'         bin/autom4te -B ''lib -B '.'/lib         --cache '' -M -l autoconf-without-aclocal-m4 \
    -t'AN_OUTPUT:$1: $2         $3' \
) | LC_ALL=C sort >>lib/autoscan/autoscan.list
WARNING: 'help2man' is missing on your system.
         You should only need it if you modified a dependency of a man page.
         You may want to install the GNU Help2man package:
         <https://www.gnu.org/software/help2man/>

I noticed that there were some commits ​back in 2013 to deal with this issue on macOS, but I'm not sure why this isn't working here.

[ryandesign (Ryan Carsten Schmidt)]

Your log says:

Updating man page man/autoreconf.1

which mine on macOS 10.15 does not. The port patches some files that make the build system think it needs to regenerate autoreconf.1, but the port also touches autoreconf.1 which should set its timestamp to be equal to or newer than that of the patched files, which should avoid the need to rebuild it. Can you confirm whether touch is working correctly? Not the command line touch command but the MacPorts Tcl implementation of touch.