Re: unlink-busy does not support cross-compilation

[Jim Meyering]

On Sat, Mar 23, 2019 at 10:26 AM Bruno Haible <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hi Jim,
>
> The module 'unlink-busy' does not support cross-compilation: It uses
> AC_RUN_IFELSE, thus calling the compiler for the host, and then sets
> INSTALL, which is meant to point to a command to execute on the build machine.
>
> It should IMO better use the compiler for the build machine, but this
> isn't easily available in Autoconf.
>
> Or just replace this entire macro outright with
>
>   AC_REQUIRE([AC_CANONICAL_BUILD])
>   case "$build_os" in
>     hpux* | mingw*) INSTALL=$ac_install_sh ;;
>   esac

Hi Bruno,

Good point.

What do you think about using the existing run-test code when possible,
but to resort to using that hard-coded list when cross-compiling?
That way, the code adapts well (at least in some cases) when it finds
a new type of system for which this is applicable.

> And why isn't the determination of the INSTALL variable part of Autoconf
> proper?

I don't know about that one. A guess: "INSTALL" was felt to be so frequently
used that autoconf always defining it might conflict with existing uses.