Re: MinGw port of gawkextlib

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Mon, 16 May 2022 13:34:55 -0400
> From: "Andrew J. Schorr" <aschorr@telemetry-investments.com>
> Cc: mcollado2011@gmail.com, bug-gawk@gnu.org
> 
> >   . it would be nice to have in gawk-mpfr's README (and that of other
> >     extensions) something to the effect that gawkextlib should be
> >     built and installed first (or maybe the configure script should be
> >     more explicit about that when it doesn't find gawkextlib
> >     installed);
> 
> This is already discussed in the top-level project README. You are the
> first to complain about this.
> 
> https://sourceforge.net/projects/gawkextlib/files/
> 
> "Please download gawkextlib plus one or more individual extensions.  You 
> should
> build and install gawkextlib first."

But if I download the gawk-mpfr-NN.MM.tar.gz tarball, I don't get that
top-level README, do I?

> >   . GAWKPROG in test/Makefile didn't pick up the value of --with-gawk=
> >     command-line arguments to the configure script;
> 
> I don't understand this issue; the configure script should set GAWKPROG
> as needed. The logic is in gawkext.m4:
> 
> AC_SUBST([GAWKPROG],"gawk${EXEEXT}")
> AC_ARG_WITH(gawk,
>         [AS_HELP_STRING([--with-gawk=PATH],[Use gawk in PATH])],
>         [
>                 if test -d "$withval/lib"; then
>                         LDFLAGS="-L${withval}/lib ${LDFLAGS}"
>                 else
>                         LDFLAGS="-L${withval} ${LDFLAGS}"
>                 fi
>                 if test -d "$withval/include"; then
>                         CPPFLAGS="-I${withval}/include ${CPPFLAGS}"
>                 else
>                         CPPFLAGS="-I${withval} ${CPPFLAGS}"
>                 fi
>                 if test -x "$withval/gawk${EXEEXT}"; then
>                         AC_SUBST([GAWKPROG],"$withval/gawk${EXEEXT}")
>                 elif test -x "$withval/bin/gawk${EXEEXT}"; then
>                         AC_SUBST([GAWKPROG],"$withval/bin/gawk${EXEEXT}")
>                 elif test -x "$withval/usr/bin/gawk${EXEEXT}"; then
>                         AC_SUBST([GAWKPROG],"$withval/usr/bin/gawk${EXEEXT}")
>                 fi
>         ]
> )
> 
> To test this, I just installed gawk from the master branch under prefix
> /extra_disk/tmp/gawk-test. I then installed gawkextlib with this configure
> command:
> 
> ./configure --prefix=/tmp/gelib --with-gawk=/extra_disk/tmp/gawk-test

I see the problem.  The value of --with-gawk= is supposed to be the
_directory_ of the Gawk executable.  Whereas I used

  --with-gawk=d:/usr/bin/gawk.exe

i.e., I specified the _file_name_ of the Gawk program executable.

May I suggest that instead of

  --with-gawk=PATH        Use gawk in PATH

the configure script would say

  --with-gawk=DIR        Use gawk in DIR

?  The GNU Coding Standards frown on using "path" for anything other
that PATH-style directory lists, and this confusion is precisely the
reason why: using explicitly "directory" or "file name" would go a
long way towards avoiding the ambiguity which tripped me in this case.

> And then gawk-MPFR with this configure command:
> 
> ./configure --prefix=/tmp/gelib --with-gawk=/extra_disk/tmp/gawk-test 
> --with-gawkextlib=/tmp/gelib
> 
> Looking in <path to gawk-mpfr>/test/Makefile, I see this:
> 
> GAWKPROG = /extra_disk/tmp/gawk-test/bin/gawk
> 
> which is exactly as it should be. What's in your config.log file?

config.log:

    $ ./configure --prefix=d:/usr --with-gawk=d:/usr/bin/gawk.exe
    ...
    GAWKPROG='gawk.exe'

test/Makefile:

    GAWKPROG = gawk.exe