The issue is actually quite different. Your patch can be used but I'll explain what happens here. In short, --with-winexe/--without-winexe wasn't backported to 4.12 release series, so both those options do not exist in the version of Samba you are trying to recompile.

Samba WAF code uses method samba_add_on_off_option to define configure option for any --with-something, like winexe. The method itself adds two options:

def samba_add_onoff_option(opt, option, help=(), dest=None, default=True,
                           with_name="with", without_name="without"):
    if default is None:
        default_str = "auto"
    elif default is True:
        default_str = "yes"
    elif default is False:
        default_str = "no"
    else:
        default_str = str(default)

    if help == ():
        help = ("Build with %s support (default=%s)" % (option, default_str))
    if dest is None:
        dest = "with_%s" % option.replace('-', '_')

    with_val = "--%s-%s" % (with_name, option)
    without_val = "--%s-%s" % (without_name, option)

    opt.add_option(with_val, help=help, action="store_true", dest=dest,
                   default=default)
    opt.add_option(without_val, help=SUPPRESS_HELP, action="store_false",
                   dest=dest)

Since samba 4.12.5 doesn't have this option defined and unconditionally try to test whether winexe is possible to use. It will eventually fail and wouldn't build it.

For any build before Samba 4.13, when we'll see the new option coming in, we need to avoid using --with-winexe and --without-winexe in the spec.

Once we start packaging 4.13, we need to get the reverted chunk back.

@abbra Thank you for the detailed explanation. Considering the situation, I probably should have just commented out the offending conditional so it's there as a reminder.

Thank you for merging so ELN can move along!