Re: name of m4 executable

[Marco Franzen]

On Mon, 30 Oct 2000, Assar Westerlund wrote:
> > the current build tree. But the default case (no m4 in the tree) hard-codes
> > overriding with the value `m4' (without the quotes) rather than not
> > overriding.
> > 
> > The Makefile sets (literally copied from its Makefile.in)
> > DEFAULT_M4 = m4

> Actually not.  The top-level configure in gcc checks for gm4 gnum4 m4
> and replaces DEFAULT_M4 with that value.
> 
> Also note that the top-level configure is not an autoconf-generated
> configure script but rather a cygnus-style configure.

Ok, then it is fine. Sorry about the confusion. I was trapped by the fact that 
both
Makefile and Makefile.in litterally contained:
DEFAULT_M4 = m4

> > On gcc's side, it is still wrong to override m4 with a hard-coded value
> > (other than maybe the empty string if that worked). At the very least, if it
> > must override it at all, then it should search for suitable m4's at
> > configuration time the same way autoconf does.
> 
> Since it actually does, the question is why it doesn't work for you.

Because I installed autoconf and m4 for it only when building GCC failed 
without it.
Since autoconf was called even though it did not exist when GCC was configured,
I did not think it was necessary to configure GCC again after installing 
autoconf.

That was certainly an unusual and probably wrong use by me.
It may still be construed a bug that GCC thinks 
it knows better what is good for autoconf when it doesn't 
(in borderline cases like this one)
and also that it tries to call a non-existing autoconf.
But I agree there are more important things that need working on
than making the build foolproof.

> > - Get the timestamps in the tarball right, so that testers don't need
> >   autoconf, bison, etc. 
> 
> I think this is what contrib/gcc_update is trying to do?

Yes, for cvs users.  As a tarball user, I tried shell script "missing" instead, 
found it did not work for the way bison was invoked by the Makefiles 
and decided it would be safer to install the whole lot. 
(I did not know that bison is different nowadays, as Alexandre Oliva told me in
<http://gcc.gnu.org/ml/gcc-bugs/2000-10/msg00523.html>.)

Yes, I should have reconfigured GCC after that. Really sorry for wasting your 
time.
Keep up the good work!

> /assar

Marco

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