On 2021-03-08, Tim Rice <tim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Mon, 8 Mar 2021, Nick Bowler wrote: [...] >> These scripts using $(...) are incorporated into the recently-released >> Automake 1.16.3, which means they get copied into packages bootstrapped >> with this version. So now, if I create a package using the latest bits, >> configuring with heirloom-sh fails: >> >> % CONFIG_SHELL=/bin/jsh jsh ./configure CONFIG_SHELL=/bin/jsh >> configure: error: cannot run /bin/jsh ./config.sub > > But why would you use CONFIG_SHELL= to specify a less capable shell? > It is there to specify a more capable shell in case it is not already > detected. It is simply a proxy to test Solaris /bin/sh behaviour using a modern GNU/Linux system. This is much easier and faster than actually testing on old Solaris systems and, more importantly, anyone can download and install this shell as it is free software and reasonably portable. Obviously I can successfully run my scripts on GNU/Linux using a modern shell such as GNU Bash. But that's not the point: Autoconf and friends are first and foremost portability tools. For me the goal is that this should be working anywhere that anyone might reasonably want to run it. But right now, it seems these portability tools are actually *causing* portability problems, rather than solving them. From my point of view this is a not so great situation. Cheers, Nick
