libiptc dev is not optional to compile rtpengine daemon (at least on Rocky 10) but documentation says such library is an optional requirement

[rodolfojcj]

rtpengine version the issue has been seen with

master branch, commit 4b6b2eb from Dec 21, 2025

Used distribution and its version

Rocky Linux 10.1 (Red Quartz)

Linux kernel version used

6.12.0-124.21.1.el10_1.x86_64

CPU architecture issue was seen on (see uname -m)

x86_64

Expected behaviour you didn't see

The documentation at https://rtpengine.readthedocs.io/en/latest/compiling_and_installing.html#manual-compilation says:

The following software packages including their development headers are required to compile the daemon:
...
libiptc library for iptables management (optional)
...

Given that, I would expect that manually compiling the rtpengine daemon to work OK, but it fails.

Also, from my understanding when setting the compiling switch with_iptables_option to no will ensure that such libiptc development library is not included, but setting or not setting that switch gives the same result. This is based on the review of some rtpengine files, according to these commands:

cd /usr/src/rtpengine-4b6b2eb/
grep -ril "with_iptables" | xargs -o vim -R -p # then look for the occurrence of the `iptables` keyword (ignoring case)
grep -ril libiptc | xargs -o vim -R -p # then look for the occurrence of the `iptc` keyword (ignoring case)

Unexpected behaviour you saw

[root@rocky10 rtpengine-4b6b2eb]# make with_iptables_option=no
/usr/src/rtpengine-4b6b2eb/utils/gen-common-flags >/usr/src/rtpengine-4b6b2eb/config.mk.new
Error: Required package 'libiptc' not found
lib/deps.Makefile:15: /usr/src/rtpengine-4b6b2eb/config.mk: No such file or directory
make: *** [lib/deps.Makefile:6: /usr/src/rtpengine-4b6b2eb/config.mk] Error 1
[root@rocky10 rtpengine-4b6b2eb]#

Steps to reproduce the problem

cd /usr/src/rtpengine-4b6b2eb/
[root@rocky10 rtpengine-4b6b2eb]# make with_iptables_option=no
# OR
[root@rocky10 rtpengine-4b6b2eb]# make with_iptables_option=yes
# OR
[root@rocky10 rtpengine-4b6b2eb]# make

Additional program output to the terminal or logs illustrating the issue

Anything else?

• Rocky 10 does not come with libiptc or libiptc-dev packages, according to the output of rpm -qa | grep -i iptc or dnf search iptc.
• Maybe the documentation is outdated, in the sense that libiptc is not optional? Or instead there is a source code bug that makes libiptc a hard requirement.
• Or maybe the following lines in the rtpengine source file el/rtpengine.spec need an adjustment so that libiptc is optional?

    %if 0%{?rhel} >= 9
    BuildRequires:	pkgconfig(libiptc)
    %endif

[rodolfojcj]

By doing the following two steps I found a possible fix for the reported issue:

1. Apply this change to rtpengine sources, so that the libiptc requirement is effectively optional:

diff --git a/utils/gen-common-flags b/utils/gen-common-flags
index 6fc193b2..223efce5 100755
--- a/utils/gen-common-flags
+++ b/utils/gen-common-flags
@@ -79,7 +79,9 @@ gen-pkgconf-flags LIBAVUTIL           libavutil
 gen-pkgconf-flags LIBCURL             libcurl
 gen-pkgconf-flags LIBCRYPTO           libcrypto
 gen-pkgconf-flags LIBEVENT            libevent_pthreads
-gen-pkgconf-flags LIBIPTC             libiptc
+if pkg-config --exists libiptc; then
+  gen-pkgconf-flags LIBIPTC             libiptc
+fi
 gen-pkgconf-flags LIBPCRE             libpcre2-8
 echo "CFLAGS_LIBPCRE += -DPCRE2_CODE_UNIT_WIDTH=8"
 gen-pkgconf-flags LIBSWRESAMPLE       libswresample

2. Run the make command passing the with_iptables_option switch set to no, like this:

make with_iptables_option=no all

The daemon/rtpengine will be generated successfully and will not have the iptables-chain command line option.

Finally, changing the file el/rtpengine.spec, which I mentioned in the initial issue description, is not needed but maybe its line saying BuildRequires: pkgconfig(libiptc) may be removed.