Re: GNU Autoconf test version 2.59d available

[Stepan Kasal]

Hello,

On Thu, Jun 08, 2006 at 09:39:33PM +0200, Andreas Büning wrote:
> What about the following patch? I think it would do. Btw, I forgot that
> $PATH usually contains drive letters.

to recognize absolute filename, Autoconf usually uses
[[\\/$]]* | ?:[[\\/]]* )
or
[[\\/]]* | ?:[[\\/]]* )

The backslash is there clearly because of MS-DOS and relatives.
The dollar is for VMS, IIRC.

I'm not sure why ? is used instead of [a-zA-Z], but I don't think it
is a problem; one shouldn't use `-:aaa' or `::bbb' as directory
names.

> +++ m4sh.m4     Thu Jun  8 21:17:26 2006
> @@ -230,9 +230,11 @@
>      [as_candidate_shells=
>      
> _AS_PATH_WALK([/usr/bin/posix$PATH_SEPARATOR/bin$PATH_SEPARATOR/usr/bin$PATH_SEPARATOR$PATH],
>        [case $as_dir in
> -        /*)
> +        /* | [A-Za-z]:/*)

Well, I suppose that the ``select better shell'' routine is important
only on archaic versions of UNIX (the term archaic doesn't exclude
the possibility that they are sold as new ;-).

If you use a Unix-like environment on a MS-DOS derived system, then
your shell is probably OK.

That's why /*) is enough, I guess.

>            for as_base in sh bash ksh sh5; do
> -            as_candidate_shells="$as_candidate_shells $as_dir/$as_base"
> +            for ac_exec_ext in '' $ac_executable_extensions; do
> +              as_candidate_shells="$as_candidate_shells 
> $as_dir/$as_base$ac_exec_ext"
> +            done

On Cygwin, both `test -f bash' and `test -f bash.exe' succeed.  Your
patch would thus mean that each shell would be tested twice there,
slowing the configure run.
Paul's workaround does not introduce that problem.
(The workaround is installed in the CVS, and thus will go to 2.60
release.)

Have a nice day,
        Stepan