> Am 29.05.2025 um 18:48 schrieb Paul Eggert <egg...@cs.ucla.edu>:
>
> Must you use MacPorts? (Remember, I'm no Mac expert.) Can't you just use
> './configure; make' like INSTALL says?
MacPorts' Portfile is such a fine "remote control" – you can record patches,
configure arguments, compiler flags etc. and also comment why you did this or
that. GNU Emacs only keeps a history of compile commands – according to my
knowledge.
And another advantage of using MacPorts is that you can easily remove from disk
what you installed some time before (and reset the system to some standards).
And when you're using old tools like rsync all your changes to Portfiles go
away – including self-written patch files (which *is* bad). Using modern git
instead seems to keep many changes and additions. But you can also feed your
own local private repository! And it can be switched on or off in a MacPorts
configuration text file.
There are cases when MacPorts cannot be used at all: when tests are using
sockets to communicate with a DB or whatever. Because the path name of the
socket inside the build (or disaster) area is longer than 104 or 105 characters
it cannot be created!
>> cd . && /bin/sh
>> /opt/local/var/macports/build/_opt_mports_macports-ports_sysutils_coreutils-devel/coreutils-devel/work/coreutils-9.7.39-c8d75/build-aux/missing
>> automake-1.17 --gnu
>
> This suggests that you updated configure.ac or m4/*.m4 or */Makefile.am or
> something like that. Let's not do that. Just unpack the tarball and use it
> without changing any files or their timestamps. If you need to make patches,
> you'll need to later run "./bootstrap" with Automake 1.18 and
> bleeding-edge-from-Savannah Autoconf and I wouldn't trust doing that on an
> ancient Mac OS platform.
Configure stopped configuring when it could not find "aclocal-1.16" or
"aclocal-1.18", exactly these executables, because of reasons I do not know why
at all. I do not know much about the use of these tools, was never a software
developer. So my first idea was to rename the text strings (I could have also
provided sym-links by those names…).
Mac OS X 10.4.11, Tiger, has an inherent problem with time stamps: they must be
at least 2 sec apart! I noticed it once and later I saw some configure scripts
(PostgreSQL?) check for the length of the time interval. Could this disturb a
simple ./configure && make?
--
Greetings
Pete
"Indentation?! I will show you how to indent when I indent your skull!"
– Unknown Klingon typist.
