Re: automake problems

On Thu, 31 Jul 2003, Robert Collins wrote:
> At the top of bootstrap.sh:
> amversions="${amver:-1.7 1.6 1.5}"
>
> means look for : automake1.7 automake1.6 automake1.5

Check this loop in the find_version shell function in bootstrap.sh:

    for variant in "" "-${version}" "`echo $version | sed -e 's/\.//g'`"; do

It looks for automake, automake-1.7, automake17, etc. On FreeBSD with
the packages I had installed, it finds automake17 and autoconf257.

All autoconf and automake invocations from bootstrap.sh itself use
the correct names ('automake17' and 'autoconf253'), but an indirect
invocation of autoconf from inside automake17 failed (because it was
trying to use the name 'autoconf' insetad of 'autoconf253').

> All the distros I've seen so far use that naming approach: i.e.
> autoconf2.57, not autoconf257.

I have seen all four styles foo-V.VV, fooV.VV, foo-VVV and fooVVV
in various places.

> So, in this case, it's FreeBSD's fault.

That's quite likely. FreeBSD's specially packaged version of automake
really ought to know how to find FreeBSD's specially packaged version of
autoconf. Note that FreeBSD had automake-1.6 and automake-1.7 (as well
as the corresponding versions of autoconf) marked as "BROKEN" in their
package system for a long time, and only marked them as working a few
weeks ago.

> I'm not sure what:
> > Setting AUTOCONF=autoconf${acver} in the environment
> Does,

I found this line in the automake perl script:

  my $traces = ($ENV{AUTOCONF} || 'autoconf') . " ";

which uses the environment variable if it's defined. I don't know what
$traces is used for, but setting the environment variable worked for me.

--apb (Alan Barrett)
Received on Thu Jul 31 2003 - 01:52:06 MDT