[AUCTeX-devel] Spaces in file names on Windows

[Ralf Angeli]

While writing some hints for the Windows-specific installation
instructions I thought it could not hurt to actually check such
recommendations.  In particular I wanted to check if the installation
routine could cope with spaces in file names, like "c:/Program Files".
So I set up a directory "d:/tmp/foo bar/" where I put in an Emacs 21.3
tree and an AUCTeX source directory.  The plan was to install AUCTeX
into the Emacs tree with the following command (in an MSYS shell):

  ./configure --prefix='d:/tmp/foo bar/emacs-21.3' \
    --with-texmf-dir='c:/Programme/MikTeX/localtexmf'

This does not work.  Here is the console output:

--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
$ ./configure --prefix='d:/tmp/foo bar/emacs-21.3' --with-texmf-dir='c:/Program
me/MikTeX/localtexmf'
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /bin/install -c
checking for date in ChangeLog... 2005-08-05
checking for release in ChangeLog... not found, using 2005-08-05 instead
checking for emacs... d:/tmp/foo bar/emacs-21.3/bin/emacs
checking if d:/tmp/foo bar/emacs-21.3/bin/emacs is XEmacs... no
checking for Emacs prefix... "d:/tmp/foo bar/emacs-21.3"
checking if Emacs is recent enough... yes
checking for mule support... yes
checking if build directory is valid... yes
checking where lisp files go... d:/tmp/foo bar/emacs-21.3/site-lisp
checking what file to use for auctex startup... d:/tmp/foo 
bar/emacs-21.3/site-lisp/auctex.el
checking where the package lisp files go... d:/tmp/foo 
bar/emacs-21.3/site-lisp/auctex
checking where the data files go... d:/tmp/foo bar/emacs-21.3/site-lisp/auctex
checking where the info files go... ${prefix}/info
checking where automatically generated global style hooks go... 
${localstatedir}/auctex
checking for tex... /c/Programme/MikTeX/texmf/miktex/bin/tex
checking for pdftex... /c/Programme/MikTeX/texmf/miktex/bin/pdftex
checking for dvips... /c/Programme/MikTeX/texmf/miktex/bin/dvips
checking for perl... /bin/perl
checking for makeinfo... /bin/makeinfo
checking for texi2html... :
checking for texi2dvi... /bin/texi2dvi
checking for texi2pdf... :
checking for install-info... /bin/install-info
configure: creating ./config.status
config.status: creating Makefile
config.status: creating tex-site.el.out
config.status: creating doc/Makefile
config.status: creating auctex.el
configure: configuring in preview
configure: running /bin/sh './configure' --prefix=d:/tmp/foo\ bar/emacs-21.3  
'--prefix=d:/tmp/foo bar/emacs-21.3' 
'--with-texmf-dir=c:/Programme/MikTeX/localtexmf' --cache-file=/dev/null 
--srcdir=.
checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
checking for a BSD-compatible install... /bin/install -c
checking for d:/tmp/foo\... d:/tmp/foo\ bar/emacs-21.3/bin/emacs
checking if d:/tmp/foo\ bar/emacs-21.3/bin/emacs is XEmacs... cat: 
./conftest-4036: No such file or directory
configure: error: Unable to run d:/tmp/foo\ bar/emacs-21.3/bin/emacs!  Aborting!
configure: error: /bin/sh './configure' failed for preview
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---

(preview/config.log is attached to this mail as well.)

Note that when running configure in the preview subdirectory there are
two --prefix switches.  AFAICS the first one is added by autoconf
because in the configure script there is

  # Always prepend --prefix to ensure using the same prefix
  # in subdir configurations.
  ac_sub_configure_args="--prefix=$prefix $ac_sub_configure_args"

Anyway, I don't know why the configure script is choking on
d:/tmp/foo\ bar/emacs-21.3/bin/emacs
because I can open Emacs by executing this string manually in the
shell without problem.  I suspected a problem with the string being
quoted in the configure script but removing the quotation marks from
"${EMACS}" (which is used in the check if the used Emacs is an XEmacs)
did not improve the situation.

I am not able to reproduce this problem with my Debian system and I am
currently out of wits what could be the problem here.  Does anybody
have an idea how to solve this?

Maybe we don't have to deal with this problem at all if we remove
checks from preview/configure.ac which are already done in the top
level configure.ac.

-- 
Ralf

config.log
Description: Text document