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Re: Installing Autoconf 2.63 on MinGW
From: |
Keith Marshall |
Subject: |
Re: Installing Autoconf 2.63 on MinGW |
Date: |
Mon, 8 Dec 2008 11:59:29 +0000 |
User-agent: |
KMail/1.9.10 |
On Sunday 07 December 2008 20:35:05 Brian Dessent wrote:
> Jason Curl wrote:
Jason,
Your question has already been asked, and answered, several times
recently, on the MinGW and MSYS mailing lists; you would do well to
search their archives, e.g.:
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.mingw.user/26315/focus=26324
http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.mingw.user/27824/focus=27838
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.gnu.mingw.msys/4605
You might also consult the Wiki article here:
http://www.mingw.org/wiki/MSYS
paying particular attention to the follow up comments regarding
autoconf.
You are doing all kinds of everything wrong here:
> > I've just downloaded mingw-1.0.11,
Er, what's that? Some kind of prehistoric release no one has heard
of? I suspect you actually mean MSYS-1.0.11.
^^^^
> > installed m4-1.4.12
From whence? This is surely your first fatal error; you *must* use
the m4-1.4.7-MSYS release, from the `MSYS Supplementary Tools:Current
Release:msysDTK-1.0.1' package collection on the MinGW download page
at SourceForge:
https://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=2435&package_id=67879
(Admittedly, SF's latest dumbing-down of the download page style has
made this very difficult to find; please complain to them, and not to
the MinGW project, about that).
> > and ActivePerl 5.10.0. When I run configure it succeeds, but
> > building autoconf fails complaining about needing GNU m4 1.4 or
> > later.
>
> Activestate? That's most likely your problem. AS Perl can't cope
> with POSIX path translation.
Again, as Brian points out, this is another likely contributor to your
problem; you should use the MSYS build of perl, which is found in the
`MSYS Supplementary Tools:Technology Preview:Tools for MSYS-1.0.11'
package collection, via the above link.
> > I've made links to perl, removed the old version of m4 so there's
> > only
>
> Do you mean copies? Because again, these tools don't know links.
Unless you mean NTFS hard links, MS-Windows in general has no concept
of links, in the *nix `symbolic-link' sense; (even the so-called
symbolic-link support, allegedly present in Vista, is a dysfunctional
joke). Sure, Cygwin subverts the MS-Windows `shortcut' feature, to
emulate symbolic-links, but such "links" cannot be used outside of
Cygwin itself.
> > autom4te_perllibdir='..'/lib AUTOM4TE_CFG='../lib/autom4te.cfg'
> > ../bin/autom4te -B '..'/lib -B '..'/lib --language M4sh
> > --cache '' --melt ./autoconf.as -o autoconf.in
> > The system cannot find the path specified.
> > autom4te: need GNU m4 1.4 or later: /usr/local/bin/m4
>
> You asked ActiveState perl to run the autom4te perl script, which
> itself proceded to attempt to invoke /usr/local/bin/m4, because
> that is the m4 that configure found. But AS Perl has no earthly
> how to translate /usr/local/... into anything meaningful, because
> it is a plain Win32 program. You need MSYS perl that knows how to
> translate /usr/local/... its actual Win32 path before invoking it.
>
> You might also consider doing a VPATH style build.
Don't waste time considering this; JUST DO IT! You are doomed to
fail, otherwise.
Regards,
Keith.