Re: m4-1.4.x fails to build git Autoconf for some x (was: branch-1_4 cannot build Autoconf 2.59 any more)

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hi Keith,

thanks for chiming in (I hoped you would  ;-)

* Keith Marshall wrote on Mon, Mar 24, 2008 at 09:18:00PM CET:
> On Monday 24 March 2008 16:51, Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> > Here's some more data.  I installed MinGW's m4-1.4.7 which works
> > fine. It has this diff over vanilla GNU m4-1.4.7.
> 
> If I may butt in here: am I correct in interpreting this to mean that 
> you can successfully build autoconf, if you use the *MSYS* prebuild of 
> m4-1.4.7, but if you use MinGW to build a vanilla GNU m4, (1.4.7 or 
> later), that it fails?

Correct on both accounts.

> If so, then this has been my experience too.  
> The problem arises because the vanilla build with MinGW leaves the 
> stdio streams in O_TEXT mode, resulting in CRLF output, whereas the 
> MSYS build uses O_BINARY mode for these streams, resulting in just LF 
> output; the residual CRs from O_TEXT output seem to confuse the 
> autoconf build process, in the freezing stage.

It's not clear to me from this description whether it is vanilla m4 that
is broken, or the Autoconf freeze code (and it's just the workaround
that is in m4).  IOW: what would be The Right Thing to do?

> > Maybe this still helps.  I don't know who wrote the patch, likely
> > Earnie or Keith,
> 
> If you are referring to the MSYS custom build, this was actually 
> provided by Chuck Wilson, a Cygwin developer who has also made 
> invaluable contributions to MSYS.

Ah yes, that would've been my next guess; thanks.

> > Note however that it is a significant hassle to get msysgit installed
> > in order to get Autoconf bootstrapped from git sources so that it
> > doesn't report a --version of UNKNOWN.
> 
> We don't provide any msysgit package, that I'm aware of.  Where did it 
> come from?

<http://code.google.com/p/msysgit/>

> It would appear to be developed independently of the MinGW 
> Project, and therefore without the assistance of the main pool of 
> experienced MSYS developers.

Well, it's a fork of mainstream git; AFAIK they intend to merge it
eventually (or have done so partly already) into upstream[1] git.

Cheers,
Ralf

[1] Well, upstream is a misnomer if you consider that git flows both
    ways, all kinds of ways ...