Re: [PATCH] Add quotes in AS_IF test for gid_t

[Sam James]

Paul Eggert <eggert@cs.ucla.edu> writes:

> On 2/6/24 20:37, Nick Bowler wrote:
>> On 2024-02-06 22:33, Sam James wrote:
>>> Noticed when building Emacs:
>>> ```
>>> * checking type of array argument to getgroups... ./configure: 42782: test: 
>>> =: unexpected operator
>>> ```
>
>> Oh look, I see this line in emacs-29.2/configure.ac:
>>    AC_DEFUN([AC_TYPE_UID_T])
>> This is the actual cause of the problem, because AC_TYPE_UID_T is
>> the
>> part of Autoconf that would have assigned this variable.  Since Emacs
>> has deleted its definition, it has therefore broken other Autoconf
>> macros (like AC_TYPE_GETGROUPS) which depend on it.
>
> Thanks for reporting this. I installed the attached patch into Emacs master.
>
> The now-fixed bug in Emacs's generated 'configure' script should be
> harmless on all platforms I know about, as AC_TYPE_GETGROUPS should go
> ahead and do the right thing anyway.

Thank you Paul!

>
> PS. There is a case for quoting all uses of ac_cv_* variables, as
> their values may be corrupted in the cache. This is my usual style
> elsewhere and perhaps Autoconf should adopt it. Of course if we'd done
> that we would likely never have spotted this harmless error in Emacs
> configure.ac....

Yeah, I had the same thought process and feel a bit torn.

thanks,
sam