[bug-inetutils] Re: [PATCH] Inetd and test scripts

[Ludovic Courtès]

Hi,

Mats Erik Andersson <address@hidden> writes:

> What about "grep", "egrep", "sed", possibly "awk"?

There are specific macros for these in Autoconf (info "(autoconf)
Particular Programs").

However, it is reasonable to assume availability of a POSIXish grep or
sed.

> In a second patch I incorporated a statement
>
>    PATH=/bin:/usr/bin/:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin
>
> Would this be sufficient?

No.  On my NixOS GNU/Linux system ‘netstat’ is currently available at
/nix/store/6bmfw4xakvlak8p4j60024rl11fri34f-net-tools-1.60/bin/netstat,
so no, that won’t be sufficient.  :-)

‘AC_PATH_PROG’ is really needed, as well as graceful handling of the
lack of ‘netstat’ by skipping the test.

In general, the build system of GNU packages should not assume any fix
location for its dependencies.

Thanks,
Ludo’.