bug#65323: build failure on Alpine Linux

[Bruno Haible]

Eli Zaretskii wrote:
> I think it goes without saying that every program invoked by the build
> must be "decent".

You are assuming more knowledge on my side than I actually had:

  * I've built many packages on Alpine Linux. None of these failed
    due to 'awk', as far as I remember. I know that configure
    scripts invoke 'awk', and this 'awk' program was always sufficient
    for configure's purposes.

  * I don't know which are the programs that are invoked by the Emacs
    build. I thought that all the utilities listed in
    https://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/html_node/Utilities-in-Makefiles.html
    — except for 'diff' — are good enough in Alpine Linux.

> Are we using some feature that is not standard in Awk?

I don't know, since I am not familiar with the Emacs build system. But if
you show me the Awk script(s) that the build executes, I might look whether
it only uses POSIX features [1] and, if so, report a bug to the Alpine
Linux people.

Bruno

[1] https://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/9699919799/utilities/awk.html