Recompiling AbiWord

In my quest to replace Google Docs, I came across AbiWord, Gnome's editor. It looks newer than LibreOffice, appears feature complete, and has footnote support. The only problem is that it does not have keyboard shortcuts for footnotes. This is how I compiled AbiWord from the git source:

Install the dependencies

sudo dnf install gcc gcc-c++ make autoconf automake libtool intltool m4 pkgconfig gtk3-devel libgsf-devel libxml2-devel glib2-devel libX11-devel libXext-devel libXpm-devel libXft-devel gperf bison flex libjpeg-turbo-devel libtiff-devel libpng-devel poppler-glib-devel cairo-devel pango-devel atk-devel gdk-pixbuf2-devel desktop-file-utils docbook2X docbook-dtds libxslt-devel libICE-devel libSM-devel libuuid-devel libIDL-devel boost-devel

Build

To build, one has to do "the normal Unix installation method": ./autogen.sh, ./configure --prefix=$HOME/abi-install¹, make -j$(nproc), and make install. However, on my Fedora 42 install, I received the error:

./autogen.sh
libtoolize: putting auxiliary files in '.'.
libtoolize: copying file './ltmain.sh'
libtoolize: putting macros in AC_CONFIG_MACRO_DIRS, 'm4'.
libtoolize: copying file 'm4/libtool.m4'
libtoolize: copying file 'm4/ltoptions.m4'
libtoolize: copying file 'm4/ltsugar.m4'
libtoolize: copying file 'm4/ltversion.m4'
libtoolize: copying file 'm4/lt~obsolete.m4'
configure.ac:58: error: possibly undefined macro: AC_MSG_ERROR If this token and others are legitimate, please use m4_pattern_allow. See the Autoconf documentation.
autoreconf: error: /usr/bin/autoconf failed with exit status: 1
Running ./configure --enable-maintainer-mode ...
configure: error: cannot find required auxiliary files: compile missing install-sh config.guess config.sub

That meant I needed an additional package:

sudo dnf install autoconf-archive

After recompiling, I found out that my added shortcuts did not integrate properly. I filed an issue against the repo and am awaiting a response.