Re: 18-bugs.patch

[Alexandre Oliva]

On Nov 12, 2000, Pavel Roskin <address@hidden> wrote:

>> acversion.m4: $(srcdir)/acversion.m4.in $(srcdir)/configure.in
>> -    sed -e 's,@''VERSION@,$(VERSION),' $(srcdir)/acversion.m4.in > 
>> acversion.tm4
>> -    cp acversion.tm4 $(srcdir)/acversion.m4
>> -    rm -f acversion.tm4
>> +    sed 's,@VERSION\@,$(VERSION),g' $(srcdir)/acversion.m4.in >acversion.m4

> Not a good idea if acversion.m4 is read-only but the directory is not.

Yep.  Besides, the proposed change won't generate acversion.m4 in the
srcdir.  Is that intended.

Another issue is that, if `sed' doesn't run to completion, for
whatever reason, you end up with an acversion.m4 whose timestamps is
newer than its dependencies and that won't be updated on the next
`make'.  That's the reason for using the temporary file.

I also recommend to use mv, and only fallback to cp and rm if mv
fails.

>> +* Grave bugs

I'd say `serious' instead.  Even though grave is a synonym with it,
``grave bugs'' admits other readings that sound odd, or even funny.
Or maybe you really meant insects that inhabit coffins? :-)

>> +** : ${foo=$val}
>> +There are problems on Ultrix and I don't recall which architecture.

There's also the problem of having cached variables containing the `}'
character, that breaks with Solaris' /bin/sh.  I don't know whether
this is a ``grave bug'', though :-)

-- 
Alexandre Oliva   Enjoy Guarana', see http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/
Red Hat GCC Developer                  address@hidden, redhat.com}
CS PhD student at IC-Unicamp        address@hidden, gnu.org}
Free Software Evangelist    *Please* write to mailing lists, not to me