What does this AC_PROVIDE do? (the "cannot run" bug)

I am trying to track down the "cannot run" but that causes libtool to fail to work with the current version of autoconf. In looking at AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIRS, I am left wondering what this call to AC_PROVIDE is for. AC_DEFUN([AC_CONFIG_AUX_DIRS], ... if test -z "$ac_aux_dir"; then AC_MSG_ERROR([

News on "cannot run" error

Ok, I have at least found how to work around the "cannot run" error when using the most recent version of autoconf with libtool. If you add calls to AC_CANONICAL_HOST and AC_CANONICAL_BUILD before calling AC_PROG_LIBTOOL, that seems to work around the problem. I am still not clear on exactly why A