Re: [Tclxml-users] Problems building tclxml with expat on linux

[Andreas K. <aku...@sh...>]

> 
> Forest W wrote:
> 
> > >If yes it is damaged, IMHO. If not we have a very weird situation, because
> > >the
> > >transformation from Makefile.in to Makefile should leave the above line
> > >alone.
> >
> > No; expat/Makefile.in:301 sets VPATH to:
> > $(srcdir)/..:$(srcdir)/xmltok:$(srcdir)/xmlwf:$(srcdir)/xmlparse
> > As you can see, the leading $(srcdir) is present here.
> >
> > The Makefile generated by configure sets VPATH to:
> > /..:$(srcdir)/xmltok:$(srcdir)/xmlwf:$(srcdir)/xmlparse
> >
> > However, when I delete the generated Makefile, run autoconf, and then
> > run configure again, the new Makefile sets VPATH to:
> > $(srcdir)/..:$(srcdir)/xmltok:$(srcdir)/xmlwf:$(srcdir)/xmlparse
> >
> > What do you think of that?
> 
> What version of autoconf did you use?  What version of autoconf
> was used to build the configure script in the TclXML distribution?

> Autoconf 2.13 has a crude special-case hack that removes VPATH
> lines if $(srcdir) is equal to "." (which is the normal case),
> in order to work around a bug in Sun's 'make'.
> 
> It looks like autoconf 2.52 has added some additional overcleverness:
> instead of deleting VPATH lines entirely, it tries to munge them
> using a hairy sed script.

> My guess: Andreas is building in the 'build' subdirectory, so the
> VPATH munging doesn't happen; Forest is building in the source directory,
> so it does, and that's what's breaking stuff.

The directory is not relevant. What is relevant is that I (the AS
build system) regenerates a number of configure scripts from their
configure.in, using autoconf 2.13, including TclXML. Thus I never
have/use a configure script which mangles its Makefile.in that badly.

The only 2.50+ configure script I know of in the AS build sources is
metakit, which I very explicitly not touch because it does contain
2.50+ specific AC macros.

I consider the above over-agressive mangling a bug in autoconf 2.52.

 
> (BTW: expat is extremely portable source code and doesn't require
> a whole lot of autoconfigury to compile.  expat/{Makefile,configure}.in
> can probably be simplified considerably.)

-- 
So long,
	Andreas Kupries <aku...@sh...>
			<http://www.purl.org/NET/akupries/>
	Developer @	<http://www.activestate.com/>
Join us at the Tenth Annual Tcl/Tk Conference <URL: http://wiki.tcl.tk/6274>
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------