Build Fails on Ubuntu 24.04 ARM: "Makefile.linux: No such file or directory"

[yagaC64]

Describe the Bug

The Webots build system fails immediately on a clean installation of Ubuntu 24.04 for ARM architectures. Any make command fails because it cannot find Makefile.linux, which appears to be a generated file. The build process seems to have a circular dependency where even the clean and configuration steps require this file to exist before they can run.

Steps to Reproduce

Use a fresh installation of Ubuntu 24.04 (ARM aarch64), for example, in a VM on Apple Silicon.

Install all documented build dependencies for Ubuntu.

Run git clone --recursive https://github.com/cyberbotics/webots.git

cd webots

Run any make command (e.g., make, make clean, make configure).

See error: make[1]: Makefile.linux: No such file or directory

Expected behavior

The make command should trigger the project configuration, generate the necessary Makefile.linux, and proceed with downloading dependencies and compiling the source code.

Screenshots

Not applicable, as this is a command-line build error.

System

Operating System: Linux Ubuntu 24.04 LTS (Noble Numbat) for ARM64/aarch64

Virtualization: Running in a VM on an Apple Silicon (ARM) host.

Graphics Card: Virtualized GPU

Additional context

The build fails at the very first step (webots_dependencies). We tried numerous workarounds, including manually creating the dependencies directory, but the root cause is always the missing Makefile.linux file, which the build system itself fails to generate. This indicates the build scripts are not compatible with this modern OS/architecture combination out-of-the-box.

[CoolSpy3]

As a warning, Linux builds are only officially supported on x86-64. With that said, Makefile.linux should be included as part of the clone. The build system does not generate it. Maybe verify that you're running make from within the webots directory and check that you've properly set $WEBOTS_HOME [1]. (You could also try explicitly unsetting it and letting the build-scripts infer it.)

Unrelated to this issue, but if you run into dependency problems, check out #6079 and #6760.

[yagaC64]

good copy! Update: After a clean clone, running make release fails. The log shows it's trying to use a downloaded version of the Qt moc tool (../../bin/qt/moc), which fails with Syntax error: "(" unexpected.

Will switch to an x86-64 architecture as (noted above too) the build script is downloading an x86-64 version of the Qt tools instead of using the system's native ARM version, making it impossible to compile on an ARM64 machine like Apple Silicon. Thanks!