Re: automake-1.11 test failure on darwin9 - instmany-python.test

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hi Peter,

* Peter O'Gorman wrote on Tue, May 19, 2009 at 06:01:49PM CEST:
> Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> > * Peter O'Gorman wrote on Mon, May 18, 2009 at 03:43:00AM CEST:
> >> The instmany-python test is failing for me on Mac OS X 10.5.7. Looks
> >> like it is trying to install things into /Library/Python, and as I did
> >> not run make check as the superuser, can't.
> > 
> > Ouch.  This looks like a bug in python.m4, or like python doing
> > something we do not expect.  In any case, configuring with a local
> > --prefix should not cause us to try to install files below /Library.
> 
> Another Apple bug.
> http://opensource.apple.com/source/python/python-30.1.3/fix/sysconfig.py.ed
> 
> The ed script patches sysconfig.py so that it ignores prefix and just
> returns /Library/Python.
> 
> I will file a bug with Apple later today.

Thank you.

Meanwhile, however, we should do something about this issue.  Automake
should not be blamed for causing users driving as root to scribble over
the python files from their distribution, nor those not driving as root
to not be able to put their python files below $HOME or so.

Can you check whether the patch I pointed out exposes the problem, or
whether it existed before?  From the ed script above I can't tell, and
the instmany-python.test is new in this release.

Any suggestions for a good workaround?  Like, honor the suggestion from
python only if $prefix was NONE, /usr/local or /usr, and $host_os =
darwin?  (Even that sounds ugly as it requires AC_CANONICAL_HOST.)

Thanks,
Ralf