Re: Testsuite fails

[Akim Demaille]

Pavel Roskin <address@hidden> writes:

> Hello, Tom!
> 
> > Pavel> AC_CHECK_TOOL([STRIP],[strip])
> >
> > Yes, I wasn't thinking.  I've removed this.
> >
> > Ideally we'd have some way to tell autoconf, "if this package can be
> > cross-compiled, then check for a cross `strip' as well".  Maybe
> > there's an ugly way to do this.
> 
> Actually, I think that Automake is wrong assuming that AC_CHECK_TOOL
> requires config.{guess,sub}. It's no longer true for the CVS Autoconf.
> 
> The idea of AC_CHECK_TOOL is that if you are cross-compiling for e.g.
> i386-aix, then configure should check for i386-aix-strip and for the
> canonicalized form, i386-ibm-aix-strip. If the canonicalized form cannot
> be found - no problem, don't check for it. Those who want to cross-compile
> are supposed to be smarter than normal users - they'll fix it if it fails.
> Not sure if Autoconf is doing exactly that, but at least configure runs
> without asking for config.{guess,sub}.

Your explanation is very correct.  AC_CHECK_TOOL only needs
host_alias, hence there was no reason to require AC_CANONICAL_*.


> A lot of code in Automake was written when Autoconf had no maintainer, so
> Autoconf tried to compensate for Autoconf's shortcomings. It's time to
> start getting rid of that code.
> 
> On the other hand, Autoconf still lacks the ability to add missing files.
> But this should be fixed in Autoconf, not in Automake.

Agreed.

> Maybe tracing will help. 

It will.

> We probably need a special macro, e.g.  AC_REQUIRE_FILE, so that the
> macros will be able to indicate what files they need.

This is what Derek and I are working on :)  But I doubt 2.50 will be
the good starting point, 2.51 will.