cannot configure on current ubuntu LTS about netdata

[alonbl]

this is different issue... you need to have access to pkg.m4 on the machine you run make dist.

so when trying this, always use recent development machine to perform the packaging, then transfer the tarball to the build machine. this way you always generate the up-to-date artifacts requires for the build.

[ktsaou]

You lost me...

Let's assume I have this machine only and I am trying to install the development version of netdata (the most common case, until we release it), how can I install it?

I tried also as root. Same result.

Note also this:

./configure: line 3902: PKG_PROG_PKG_CONFIG: command not found

Is there something the user can do to configure it?

[alonbl]

well... autoconf process separate between development machine and build machine.
developer have autoconf/automake/libtool/perl and other tools at his machine, while build requirements are minimum shell and POSIX tools.
the way it is achieved is by generating code at developer machine and have it available for build machine.
configure script is a good example, it is generated out of many files.
one of them, which is missing in this environment is pkg.m4 which is the code of pkg-config.
so your options are:

1. for development use your machine, for build/test use the older machine. this is the best practice. run autoreconf -ivf && ./configure && make dist at development machine, extract and build tarball on build machine.
2. locate the package that provide /usr/share/aclocal/pkg.m4, usually it will be something like pkgconfig or pkgconfig-devel, install it, then run autoreconf -ivf.
3. copy pkg.m4 to package's m4 directory from a machine it is available, then run autoreconf -ivf.

[ktsaou]

ok. I found pkg-config was missing.

Alter installing it and running . /etc/profile, everything works.