Re: handling of missing AR

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hi Brian,

* Brian Gough wrote on Wed, Mar 29, 2006 at 09:11:54PM CEST:
> 
> I've had a libtool-related problem reported with a test release of GNU
> GSL on a Solaris system with gcc & Sun ld, but missing 'ar'.

Erm.  The user did not have /usr/ccs/bin in $PATH?
I've never heard about a Solaris where ar was not installed.

> The configure stage on this system gives (coming from AC_PROG_LIBTOOL),
> 
>   checking for ar... false
>   checking for ranlib... :
>   checking for strip... :
> 
> And the build then fails later (as expected) on the first use of 'ar'

> The question was asked "Why doesn't configure stop with an error when
> it finds ar is missing?"  I didn't have a good answer to that.  For
> the average user the final error message is a hard to decipher.

Well yes, but sometimes ar is not needed, for example it /may/ not be
needed when --disable-static is given.

> Is there any reason I shouldn't put a test in the configure script to
> bail out if ar is not found?---since I'm building static and shared
> libraries it is always going to be needed I think.

Naa.  Kean Johnston already suggested adding /usr/ccs/bin to the PATH
for those tests (or was that /usr/ccs/bin/elf or both?  I'll go and
check).  Could you check with the user that those tools are available
there?  Then let's do that to fix the actual failure instead.

Cheers,
Ralf