Sphinx build failure

[cgervais]

I'm trying to install sphinx 2.2.9, which is the stable version available in Tigerbrew, but it's failing at:

<snip>
rm -rf ${dest}
cp: illegal option -- a
usage: cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-f | -i | -n] [-pv] src target
       cp [-R [-H | -L | -P]] [-f | -i | -n] [-pv] src1 ... srcN directory
make: *** [dist_libstemmer_c] Error 64
rm algorithms/spanish/stem_Unicode.sbl algorithms/porter/stem_Unicode.sbl algorithms/dutch/stem_Unicode.sbl algorithms/danish/stem_Unicode.sbl algorithms/finnish/stem_Unicode.sbl algorithms/italian/stem_Unicode.sbl algorithms/swedish/stem_Unicode.sbl algorithms/english/stem_Unicode.sbl algorithms/german/stem_Unicode.sbl algorithms/norwegian/stem_Unicode.sbl algorithms/portuguese/stem_Unicode.sbl algorithms/french/stem_Unicode.sbl
Error: No such file or directory - /usr/sbin/pkgutil

It's failing as pkgutil and related binaries aren't present on Tiger and I don't really see an option to build them for Tiger (they were included in later versions of Mac OS X).

Here's the gist with the full output of HOMEBREW_MAKE_JOBS=1 VERBOSE=1 brew install sphinx and brew -v doctor

[mistydemeo]

The pkgutil error is a red herring; the actual error is something else.

Looks like the buildsystem is trying to call cp -a, which I suppose the system cp didn't have yet? Looks like it'll need to be fixed to no ttry to use it if it's not available.