-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 According to John Calcote on 4/10/2008 3:00 PM: | Hi Eric, (et.al.), | | I've run into a possible bug in the Autoconf (2.62, and previous) | package while I've been playing with it lately. | | 1. The manual indicates in sec 5.2, pg 39, bottom of the page (Feb 08 | 2.61 version) that autoconf ships with a version of install-sh that I hope you meant 2.62 ;) | you can use if you wish. I believe this to be an inaccurate statement, | as no install-sh script actually gets installed with the autoconf | package (at least not lately). It's there, as autoconf-2.62/build-aux/install-sh. You are correct that we don't install it anywhere, because automake does a better job at that; but by virtue of the fact that you have the autoconf package, you have access to the script. | | 2. autoreconf --install is supposed to install missing files, or | rather pass appropriate options to the tools that it runs to install | missing files. This works fine with automake, which supports | --add-missing, but autoconf has no such option to install missing | files (even if it had one to install). Yes, it is 'automake --add-missing' which automatically installs install-sh, and 'autoreconf --install' relies on automake to do this. If you don't use automake on your project, then the installation of install-sh is not automatic, and there is nothing autoreconf will do about that. | | 3. If you're setting up an Autoconf-only project (no Automake or | Libtool), and you use the AC_PROG_INSTALL macro, then the configure | script generated by autoconf requires install-sh to exist, but the | Autoconf package it doesn't provide it or a way to install it if it's | missing. Other than copying it in by hand. Yes, it's annoying, but so far, no one has contributed a patch to change that. | Furthermore, since you haven't used the AM initialization | macros in your configure.ac file, autoreconf --install won't even run | automake --add-missing (--copy). | | Is this an oversight? I suppose so, but not one that has bothered me enough to write a patch (mainly because I always use automake). What bothers me more is that we don't have a decent way of enforcing, at 'autoconf' time, that install-sh exists and has executable permissions; it takes 'configure' to test its existence, and too many people have distributed packages with install-sh accidentally lacking execute permissions; but still not to the point that I've done anything about it. Care to write a patch yourself? Or maybe you could think of autoconf's behavior as free advertising for automake ;) - -- Don't work too hard, make some time for fun as well! Eric Blake ebb9@xxxxxxx -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (Cygwin) Comment: Public key at home.comcast.net/~ericblake/eblake.gpg Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iEYEARECAAYFAkf+0KMACgkQ84KuGfSFAYAt2wCgo+FJRc7l9KZLRR2JaTd8dSJm ArkAn29Xzd555RwTa5hupbXNTXgEy70E =FeXA -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- _______________________________________________ Autoconf mailing list Autoconf@xxxxxxx http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/autoconf
