AC_ARG_VAR

[Pontus Skoeld]

        Hi,

(this concerns autoconf and autoconf documentation as of version 2.53)

I'm having problem with autoconf and precious variables. Basically, by
the documentation for AC_ARG_VAR (and the note about declaring
variables passed to AC_CHECK_PROG) I'm led to believe I can make any
variable precious and the following should work:

if test -z "$FOO_PROG"; then
  AC_PATH_PROG(FOO_PROG,foo,missing)
fi

AC_ARG_VAR(FOO_PROG)

and if the user runs 

$ PATH=$PATH:/path/to/foo ./configure

config.status --recheck will pass FOO_PROG to configure, but that
seems not to be the case.

I have noted that everything works as expected if the user passes
FOO_PROG to configure (either by running

$ FOO_PROG=/path/to/foo/foo ./configure

or

$ ./configure FOO_PROG=/path/to/foo/foo 

it works as expected (config.status feeds configure with
FOO_PROG=/path/to/foo/foo when I do --recheck).

If this is not a bug but the way that precious variables are supposed
to be used (i.e. it's impossible to "create" precious variables) I
think it should be stressed in the documentation for AC_ARG_VAR.

        /Pontus

-- 

Pontus Sköld, see <URL:http://soua.net/> for more information.