On Thu, Mar 12, 2020 at 6:47 PM Michael Orlitzky <michael@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On 3/12/20 4:53 PM, Zack Weinberg wrote: > > > > On further investigation, there is a concrete reason why autoconf 2.69 > > prefers SHELL=/bin/bash to SHELL=/bin/dash, namely that dash doesn't > > support $LINENO, necessitating a complicated and fragile workaround > > The $LINENO support in dash is configurable and enabled by default. You > have to disable it with ./configure --disable-lineno. Apparently, Debian > does so [0] to ensure that autoconf scripts with bashisms in them keep > working. In other words, they break dash just enough that bash will be > used as a fallback. Thanks, this is really useful information. I'm adding an archive rebuild with $LINENO turned back on in dash, followed by mass bug filing, to my list of things that might need to happen before a new autoconf release. zw
