i found the shell script (apparently unused) ~autobuilder/.local/bin/autobuild.sh beside the binary that the git hook runs - for troubleshooting, i temporarily commented the `exit` when there are no new commits, and got the following syntax errors running it:

/usr/share/makepkg/util/pkgbuild.sh: eval: line 90: unexpected EOF while looking for matching `)'
/usr/share/makepkg/util/pkgbuild.sh: eval: line 91: syntax error: unexpected end of file

that refers to this code:

        # this function requires extglob - save current status to restore later
        local shellopts=$(shopt -p extglob)
        shopt -s extglob

        while read -r; do
                # strip leading whitespace and any usage of declare
                decl=${REPLY##*([[:space:]])}
                eval "${decl/#$attr/$outputvar}" 

                # entering this loop at all means we found a match, so notify the caller.
                r=0
        done < <(grep_function "$funcname" "$attr_regex")

        eval "$shellopts" 

otherwise it continued normally but that same error was shown again multiple times

in the end, it fails anyways just after (otherwise successfully) building the package in the librechroot

...
 |  ==> Leaving fakeroot environment.
 |  ==> Finished making: your-freedom 20180923.1-1 (Sun 23 Sep 2018 09:35:44 PM GMT)
==> Starting post-build activities...
 |  ==> Extracting database to a temporary location...
 |  ==> Adding package 'your-freedom-20180923.1-1-any.pkg.tar.xz'
 |    -> Computing checksums...
 |    -> Creating 'desc' db entry...
 |    -> Creating 'files' db entry...
 |  ==> Creating updated database file 'repo.db.tar.gz'
==> Copying log and package files out of the chroot...
==> Found package: your-freedom-20180923.1-1-any.pkg.tar.xz
==> ERROR: PACKAGER was not set when building package

==> ERROR: An unknown error has occurred. Exiting...
User defined signal 1

I think multiple things are wrong.

Right before the quoted error message, it "should" have also said

remote:   -> Updating abslibre git repo...
remote: Fetching origin
remote: fatal: unable to look up git.parabola.nu (port 9418) (Name or service not known)
remote: error: Could not fetch origin
remote: ==> WARNING: Failure while updating abslibre git repo

Which will later cause

remote: To ssh://git.parabola.nu:1863/~git/abslibre/abslibre.git
remote:  ! [rejected]            master -> master (fetch first)
remote: error: failed to push some refs to 'ssh://git@git.parabola.nu:1863/~git/abslibre/abslibre.git'
remote: hint: Updates were rejected because the remote contains work that you do
remote: hint: not have locally. This is usually caused by another repository pushing
remote: hint: to the same ref. You may want to first integrate the remote changes
remote: hint: (e.g., 'git pull ...') before pushing again.
remote: hint: See the 'Note about fast-forwards' in 'git push --help' for details.
remote: 
remote: ==> ERROR: An unknown error has occurred. Exiting...

Obviously, git.parabola.nu resolves as talking to it is used later. I don't know what's going on.

Depending on when I get home later tonight, I'll either look in to it either tonight or tomorrow.

Should be fixed?

I don't really know what was wrong, so let's leave this open until we get verifications that things are working ok.