On Feb  2, 2000, Akim Demaille <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>>>>>> "Alexandre" == Alexandre Oliva <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Alexandre> Only CVS autoconf accepts implicitly quotes backticks in
Alexandre> MSGs.  But it complains if backtick is already quoted.
Alexandre> Relying upon the autoconf-CVS behavior is a mistake, IMO,
Alexandre> and the fact that autoconf complains (warns) about quoted
Alexandre> backticks is also a mistake, IMO.  I'd rather revert to the
Alexandre> explicitly quoted backtick in automake, and arrange that
Alexandre> autoconf doesn't complain about the quoted backtick.  Akim?
Alexandre> Tom?

> My opinion is that we implicitly supported the idea that using CVS
> Automake *is* using CVS Autoconf and conversely.

Not if it can be helped.  CVS autoconf requires a whole lot of changes
in `configure.in's to keep it quiet, and automake is still usable
without any of these features.  I'm totally against coupling releases
of software unless it can't be helped.  Which means that I'd really
like if automake CVS could still be used without autoconf CVS, even
after it is improved to make use of --trace and such.  Yes, this means
keeping backward-compatibility code.  Which, IMO, is a good thing.

I have enough trouble convincing other developers of other projects,
such as Kaffe, to use libtool and automake from CVS, because they
offer features we really need.  I'd rather not force them to install
and use autoconf CVS too.

> So, though I'm not frankly against having this silent, I'm not in
> favor of it.

This problem has just cost me a whole hour of investigation, trying to
figure out what the heck was wrong with AC_PROG_LN_S, which was where
bash reported the error to be (after the matching backtick).  I even
suspected someone had hacked into the lab and replaced bash with some
non-working shell!

So I installed the following patch in automake, so that we don't have
to change autoconf.

Index: ChangeLog
from  Alexandre Oliva  <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
	
	* m4/missing.m4: Print the backtick in a way that won't cause
	autoconf CVS to emit any warnings.
	
Index: m4/missing.m4
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvs/automake/automake/m4/missing.m4,v
retrieving revision 1.8
diff -u -r1.8 missing.m4
--- m4/missing.m4	1999/12/10 07:49:33	1.8
+++ m4/missing.m4	2000/03/13 10:38:32
@@ -32,6 +32,7 @@
   am_missing_run="$MISSING --run "
 else
   am_missing_run=
-  AC_MSG_WARN([`missing' script is too old or missing])
+  am_backtick='`'
+  AC_MSG_WARN([${am_backtick}missing' script is too old or missing])
 fi
 ])

-- 
Alexandre Oliva     http://www.ic.unicamp.br/~oliva/     Enjoy Guaranį
Cygnus Solutions, a Red Hat company        aoliva@{redhat, cygnus}.com
Free Software Developer and Evangelist    CS PhD student at IC-Unicamp
oliva@{lsd.ic.unicamp.br, gnu.org}   Write to mailing lists, not to me

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