Re: bison-1.29c 'configure' problems on Solaris 8.

[Paul Eggert]

> From: Akim Demaille <address@hidden>
> Date: 05 Oct 2001 10:56:04 +0200
> 
> So am I understanding that LINENO is a POSIX feature?

Yes.

> The current implementation in CVS Autoconf might be broken, but
> really, I fail to understand what makes you fear the LINENO stuff that
> much.  Why do you say it is broken?  What is the *current* problem?

The latest problem is what happens when you type control-C when you
are generating configure.lineno.  My guess is that there will be more
problems.

> Raja says it works fine on Solaris 8.  I'm referring to CVS Autoconf,
> of course.

After I checked in a regenerated 'configure', I think it probably
works on Solaris 8 if your environment is OK.  But I suspect we'll run
into more problems later, as people run it with different environment
variables, or on different hosts.

> People, the question is:
> 
>         If we look for a reasonable shell and re-exec configure once
>         we found one, are you OK with keeping $LINENO used in
>         configure, even if the shell does not treat $LINENO specially?

I don't quite understand the question as worded.  Here's how I would
word the question:

   Suppose we change "configure" so that, if invoked with a shell that
   does not support LINENO, it first looks for a shell that supports
   LINENO and re-executes "configure" with that shell.  This should
   avoid the LINENO problem on all major operating systems shipped in
   the last seven years or so.  (SunOS 4.1.4, the last major holdout,
   shipped in November 1994.)

   If we do this, is it still worth the aggravation of maintaining
   code to substitute LINENO ourselves, for older hosts like SunOS
   4.1.4 that have no shell that supports LINENO?

   The advantage of substituting for LINENO is that "configure"
   failures will have nice-looking line numbers even on older hosts.
   This advantage applies only when "configure" fails.

   The disadvantage is that the LINENO-substituting code does not work
   in all cases now, will hardly ever be exercised, and will probably
   continue to have bugs indefinitely.