#473 bison 2.4.1 error when invoking m4

[Vladislav Vaintroub]

I compile MySQL from source with Visual Studio. The project contains a custom step that generates parser from sql_yacc.yy and uses bison for it.

After upgrading bison to 2.4.1, compilation hangs after m4 invoked by bison outputs error messages:

1>m4: cannot open Files': No such file or directory 1>m4: cannot open(x86)\GnuWin32/share/bison': No such file or directory
1>m4: cannot open C:\Program': No such file or directory 1>m4: cannot openFiles': No such file or directory
1>m4: cannot open `(x86)\GnuWin32/share/bison/m4sugar/m4sugar.m4': No such file
or directory

Process Explorer shows that
bison that invokes m4 with the following command line:
m4 -I C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32/share/bison C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32/share/bison/m4sugar/m4sugar.m4 - C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32/share/bison/bison.m4 C:\Program Files (x86)\GnuWin32/share/bison/c-skel.m4

It looks line command line arguments containing spaces must be enclosed in quotes.

[Vladislav Vaintroub]

Any news?

[Julien Blitte]

Hello,

The bug is located in the create_subpipe() function, not in bison software itself.
create_subpipe() is referenced in function output_skeleton() in file src/output.c and called with good arguments.

Bug seems to be solved in newver version, since the use of create_pipe_bidi() function.

Julien B.

[Julien Blitte]

Hello,

I have checked, implementation of create_pipe(), the code of function is correct but it
calls the subroutine _spawnvp() in library msvcrt.dll (Microsoft runtime for C).
I have double checked with a debugger, the call is done correctly.

So the bug must be located in the function _spawnvp(), and it's definitively not a Bison bug but Microsoft issue with _spawnvp() function in their C library :-(

New implementation with create_pipe_bidi() should solve this issue.

Julien

[Anonymous]

Hello again,

I worked last night on this and I fixed the executable itself in binary.
I have not all the libraries, tools and courage to recompile the last version, so I patched last GnuWin32 compiled version of Bison (2.4.1).

Fixed version of Bison binary can be found here:
http://marin.jb.free.fr/bison/bison-2.4.1-modified.zip

It works from my side; it does compile with binary being into C:\Program Files...

As it was technicaly interesting (for me at least), I wrote an article regarding the implemented fix. If it may interest someone else, detailed explanation is here:
http://marin.jb.free.fr/bison

Julien

[Anonymous]

thank you very much vincent kasyoki kenya gis C++ programmer