Re: automake-1.7.3: single test failure on NetBSD 1.6, and autoconf-2.57

[Alexandre Duret-Lutz]

>>> "Nelson" == Nelson H F Beebe <address@hidden> writes:

 Nelson> Thanks very much for the explanation of the prefix setting problem in
 Nelson> configure on NetBSD that resulted in a test failure for
 Nelson> automake-1.7.3.  I can indeed confirm your suspicion:

 Nelson> % uname -a
 Nelson> NetBSD netbsd.vm.math.utah.edu 1.6 NetBSD 1.6 (GENERIC) #0:
 Nelson> Sun Sep 8 19:43:40 UTC 2002
 Nelson> 
address@hidden:/autobuild/i386/OBJ/autobuild/src/sys/arch/i386/compile/GENERIC
 Nelson> i386 i386 Intel Pentium III (Katmai) (686-class) NetBSD

 Nelson> % echo $prefix
 Nelson> /usr/local

 Nelson> % env TESTS=man2.test make check -e
 Nelson> ...

 Nelson> % grep '^prefix' testSubDir/config.log
 Nelson> prefix=''

If you see this, then the problem isn't in configure.  This is
the *expected* output.

However, now that I know you have $prefix in the environment, I
understand why the test fails.

The test runs

   DESTDIR="`pwd`/_inst" $MAKE -e install

where `$MAKE -e' means "override any variable definition in
Makefile with variable from the environment".  So ./configure
correctly sets prefix= empty, but it gets overridden by your
environment when we run $MAKE -e.  Too bad.

I believe this test case will succeed as soon as you unset your
$prefix environment variable.

 Nelson> I've noticed similar problems in builds of several other packages on
 Nelson> systems where I have prefix set to something other than /usr/local:
 Nelson> I still get

 Nelson> prefix=/usr/local

 Nelson> in the Makefile, instead of the correct value from the environment.

I think ./configure never fetches $prefix from the environment.
This seems good to me, as using the environment often leads
to confusion (this thread is just one example).

You can use --prefix or a config.site script to set $prefix.

[...]

-- 
Alexandre Duret-Lutz