On 01/18/2013 07:45 PM, Philipp Thomas wrote: > * Nick Bowler (nbow...@elliptictech.com) [20130118 17:17]: > >> If the package author(s) provided a script to bootstrap the build >> system, then you should use that script. Someone made the effort to >> write that script, and they presumably did not do so for no reason. > > I have no idea why they originally wrote that script. Fact is it failed to > update the libtool configury correctly so that builing failed because of > libtool version mismatches. I had (wrongly) assumed that running autoreconf > instead would get me quicker to a building package. > >> You say that the provided script works, so that implies that a plain >> autoreconf is not the correct way to bootstrap this package. > > That wasn't quite correct as I wrote above. > >> If you think this is a bug or limitation in autoreconf, could you >> provide a small example package which demonstrates the problem? > > ATM I have no time for dol an example package but the scenario I encounterd > goes something like this: > > > In file swig.m4: > > AC_DEFUN([MLX_PROG_SWIG],[ > > if test ! -z "$has_swig"; then > SWIG_LIB=`$SWIG -swiglib` > AM_CONDITIONAL(HAS_SWIG,[test 1]) > else > AM_CONDITIONAL(HAS_SWIG,[test 0]) > fi > > ]) > This is a user error; according to the POSIX standard, "test N" evaluates to "true" for every N >= 0:
$ bash -c 'test 1' && echo TRUE TRUE $ bash -c 'test 0' && echo TRUE TRUE $ dash -c 'test 1' && echo TRUE TRUE $ dash -c 'test 0' && echo TRUE TRUE A correct usage would probably be something like (untested): AM_CONDITIONAL([HAS_SWIG], [test x"$has_swig" != x]) test x"$has_swig" != x && SWIG_LIB=`$SWIG -swiglib` > And autoreconf complains that there is no AM_CONDITIONAL for HAS_SWIG > unless I directly m4_include swig.m4. Is that a suffient description? > As for this, it might be a bug or a limitation, since it doesn't seem related to the user error above. Could you try to send a minimal and correct reproducer for it? Thanks, Stefano
