Re: automake/autoreconf: Incomprehensible error messages bugs

[Noah Misch]

On Sun, Jan 23, 2005 at 09:28:36AM -0800, Bruce Korb wrote:
> > $ autoreconf
> > autoreconf: configure.ac: AM_GNU_GETTEXT is used, but not 
> > AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION

> 1.  The automake example of AM_GNU_GETTEXT does not show
>      AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION being used in conjunction with it.
>     In fact, it isn't even documented at all.

See the gettext documentation.  `autopoint' uses AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION (and
fails without it), so `autoreconf' does not run `autopoint' if `configure.ac'
does not call `AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION'.  This is not actually a fatal error;
the message probably should begin ``autoreconf: warning: ...''.

> 2.  Surely the message, "cannot empty /tmp/ar0.4849: Is a directory"
>      can be made more meaningful.  What _does_ it mean?
>      (Besides being the error message "rm" will give you.  :)

The message is not meaningful because this Never Happens :)

autoreconf tried to delete the contents of its temporary directory, and then the
directory itself.  The former failed silently, so the latter failed noisely.  I
hit this once before with a broken Perl (Slackware 3.3, 5.004_03 IIRC) where
Perl's globbing mysteriously returned an empty list every time.  You can try a
simple `perl -e 'print <*>' in a nonempty directory; if it prints nothing, that
is your problem, too.  It certainly may be something entirely different, though.

What type of system is this?  What version of Perl?