autoconf and OS/2

[Andreas Buening]

Hello!

I suggest the following patches:

1) The included mkinstalldirs doesn't work if the directory
   name contains a drive letter, e.g. mkinstalldirs x:/dir.
   The reason is the following code line which is used twice
   in mkinstalldirs:

   if test ! -d "$pathcomp"; then

   This doesn't work if $pathcomp is a drive letter
   because "x:" is no directory. ("cp foo x:" e.g. will
   copy "foo" to the current directory of x: whatever this
   may be for the current process).

   Therefore I suggest to use:

   if test ! -d "$pathcomp" -a ! -d "$pathcomp/"; then

   This works because "x:/" is an absolute path.

*******************************************


2) A drive letter can't be used as prefix directory.
   
Suggested patch:

--- old/autoconf-2.50/acgeneral.m4      Sat May 19 17:29:30 2001
+++ gnu/autoconf-2.50/acgeneral.m4      Sat Sep  8 17:41:42 2001
@@ -1156,8 +1156,10 @@
               exec_prefix prefix
 do
   eval ac_val=$`echo $ac_var`
+# Note: x: is also treated as an absolute path, so --prefix=x: is
allowed.
+#       
   case $ac_val in
-    [[\\/$]]* | ?:[[\\/]]* ) ;;
+    [[\\/$]]* | ?:[[\\/]]* | ?: ) ;;
     NONE ) ;;
     *)  AC_MSG_ERROR([expected an absolute path for --$ac_var:
$ac_val]);;
   esac

*******************************************


3) if config.guess and/or config.sub fail there could be
   a message where to download a new copy of these files, e.g.:

--- old/autoconf-2.50/acgeneral.m4      Sat May 19 17:29:30 2001
+++ gnu/autoconf-2.50/acgeneral.m4      Sat Sep  8 17:41:42 2001
@@ -1835,14 +1837,18 @@
   --build=BUILD     configure for building on BUILD [guessed]]])dnl
 # Make sure we can run config.sub.
 $ac_config_sub sun4 >/dev/null 2>&1 ||
-  AC_MSG_ERROR([cannot run $ac_config_sub])
+  AC_MSG_ERROR([cannot run $ac_config_sub; \
+if $ac_config_guess is outdated you should download a new copy \
+from ftp://ftp.gnu/org/gnu/config/])
 
 AC_CACHE_CHECK([build system type], [ac_cv_build],
 [ac_cv_build_alias=$build_alias
 test -z "$ac_cv_build_alias" &&
   ac_cv_build_alias=`$ac_config_guess`
 test -z "$ac_cv_build_alias" &&
-  AC_MSG_ERROR([cannot guess build type; you must specify one])
+  AC_MSG_ERROR([cannot guess build type; you must specify one; \
+if $ac_config_guess is outdated you should download a new copy \
+from ftp://ftp.gnu/org/gnu/config/])
 ac_cv_build=`$ac_config_sub $ac_cv_build_alias` ||
   AC_MSG_ERROR([$ac_config_sub $ac_cv_build_alias failed.])
 ])


*******************************************


4) Backslashes in $PATH do not work, at least not for
   the install program because of the following code in
   config.status:

:t
/@[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z_0-9]*@/!b
s,@configure_input@,$configure_input,;t t
s,@srcdir@,$ac_srcdir,;t t
s,@top_srcdir@,$ac_top_srcdir,;t t
s,@INSTALL@,$ac_INSTALL,;t t
" $ac_file_inputs | (eval "$ac_sed_cmds") >$tmp/out
  rm -f $tmp/stdin
  if test x"$ac_file" != x-; then
    mv $tmp/out $ac_file
  else
    cat $tmp/out
    rm -f $tmp/out
  fi

Replace $ac_INSTALL by "/bin\ginstall" and you will see.


bye,
Andreas