FW: autoreconf

[Sven Panne]

Donald Bruce Stewart wrote:
> simonmar:
> 
>>Can any autoconf experts shed any light on this, in the current HEAD:
>>
>>On 03 September 2004 12:17, Simon Peyton-Jones wrote:
>>
>>
>>>cam-02-unx:~/builds/HEAD$ autoreconf
>>>Use of uninitialized value in pattern match (m//) at
>>>/home/simonmar/fp/bin/i386-unknown-linux/autoreconf line 299. Use of
>>>uninitialized value in pattern match (m//) at
>>>/home/simonmar/fp/bin/i386-unknown-linux/autoreconf line 299.  
>>
>>It doesn't happen for me, and line 299 of autoreconf doesn't contain a
>>m// expression so the error message itself is clearly bogus.
> 
> 
> Ok.. it doesn't happen if I have automake/aclocal installed. But if I
> take them off the system:
> 
>  manzano$ autoreconf-2.59
>          Can't exec "aclocal": No such file or directory at
>                 /usr/local/bin/autoreconf-2.59 line 174.
>          Use of uninitialized value in pattern match (m//) at
>                 /usr/local/bin/autoreconf-2.59 line 174.
> 
> You need automake to make the error disappear. Line 174 of autoreconf is:
>         $aclocal_supports_force = `$aclocal --help` =~ /--force/;
> which is a m// that tries to invoke aclocal, which fails because it isn't
> installed on the system. Is there another missing aclocal.m4?

Don't guess: Use "autoreconf -v". :-) The problem is that the above message
is caused by a bug introduced in autoconf 2.59, namely the simplistic --force
test quoted above. Things seem to work, though, so this should be ignored IMHO.
Perhaps somebody likes to submit a bug report to the autoconf people... I guess
that a platfotm *with* autoconf but *without* automake is rather uncommon, so
this hasn't really been tested before.

Cheers,
    S.