Re: [Gcl-devel] Configure

[Gregory Wright]

On Tue, 2002-07-09 at 19:40, Mike Thomas wrote:
> Thanks Greg.
> 
> > It's almost certainly a quoting problem. Autoconf 2.5x is much more
> > strict than earlier versions, and I had a similar problem building on
> > linux-2.2.16 + RH6.2.
> 
> After I got home last night I found your earlier messages and applied most
> of the patches around the get time of day stuff, which allowed autoconf to
> work, but I then crashed out for the night before proceeding further.  I'll
> try and do some more today.
> 
> > Your options are to downgrade to autoconf 2.13 (known to work)
> 
> I won't be doing this as I need to stay up to date for other work.
> 
> > or I
> > could send you my patch which works on linux (but is untested
> > otherwise).
> 
> If that is identical to the one on the mailing list don't worry, otherwise
> please send it.

It's the same.

> 
> > I am in the process of cleaning up our configure.in to work
> > with 2.5x; your experience would helpful.
> 
> I'll be pleased to report what happens.

I hope to have a cleaned up configure.ac (the preferred name since 2.50)
ready for testing in about a week.

> 
> My understanding is that you are just putting square brackets around M4
> macro arguments.  Could you please explain in a little more detail what that
> does in the context of the different versions of autoconf?  (I am a complete
> beginner on autoconf and M4, so far just modifying preexisting code by
> example without any real understanding of what I am doing.)

Yes, quoting is just putting square brackets around things. The
differences happen because 2.5x is a big reworking of autoconf, trying
to rationalize the design of tests by basing them on a smaller set of
component macros. (This is in distinction to autoconf 2.13 and earlier,
which looks as if it "just grew".) So internally you have more nested
macros. What this means to the writer of configure.in files is that in
2.5x you will see extra rounds of macro expansion, each one of which
strips off a quote. 

The documentation of autoconf 2.5x is very much improved from earlier
versions, so if you've been confused in the past by the manual (as I
was) it's worth printing out the new one.

> 
> 
> Cheers
> 
> Mike Thomas.
> 
> 
> 
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Gregory Wright
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