Re: Small bug in status.m4?

[Noah Misch]

On Tue, Apr 04, 2006 at 08:15:24PM +0200, Stepan Kasal wrote:
> I tried to understand the relevant part of _AC_INIT_HELP and I actually 
> failed:
> in case a Cygnus style configure is found, it calls ``$ac_configure --help''
> 
> But ac_configure is set far below, in AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIRS.
> (Check the configure from CVS autoconf, for example.)
> 
> So if I'm not missing something, the recursive help doesn't work with Cygwin
> configure.

This looks correct.

> To fix this, we'd have to move the AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIRS heuristics up to
> the diversion PARSE_ARGS.  I'm not sure it's worth it---a quick check shows
> that this bug is there at least since 2.50; so we can suppose no one cares.
> I'd remove this from the recursive help code, replacing it with a comment
> that recursive help doesn't work with Cygnus sub-configures.

I have no reason to think that interoperability with Cygnus configure matters at
all.  I haven't met a package under active development that uses it.  Remove
support for --help=recursive with respect to it, or simply leave it broken.

> On the other hand, if you see other reasons why AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIRS should
> go to PARSE_ARGS, it can be easily done.

Not offhand.