if headerfiles are not installed for glibc, spack install gcc from a buildcache fails with a cryptic error.

[Robert Underwood]

Steps to reproduce

spack mirror add develop-developer-tools-manylinux2014 https://binaries.spack.io/develop/developer-tools-manylinux2014
spack buildcache keys --installl --trust
spack install gcc

Error message

Error: No path specified

Information on your system

• Spack: 0.22.0.dev0 (b79761b)
• Python: 3.10.12
• Platform: linux-ubuntu22.04-broadwell
• Concretizer:

glibc-devel/libc-dev is NOT installed, but libc/glibc is installed.

I tracked down the issue from the backtrace to spack/lib/spack/spack/util/libc.py where startfile_prefix is None in libc_include_dir_from_startfile_prefix ideally, this gives a better error message telling you to provide or install a glibc with development headers.

General information

• I have run spack debug report and reported the version of Spack/Python/Platform
• I have searched the issues of this repo and believe this is not a duplicate
• I have run the failing commands in debug mode and reported the output