bug#10925: Perl version problem in autoconf-2.68b

[Eric Blake]

[adding bug-automake]

On 03/01/2012 11:23 PM, Paul Eggert wrote:
> I tried to build Autoconf 2.68b on our production Solaris 8 sparc host
> (yes, we still have some in production), and the build failed as follows:
> 
> autom4te_perllibdir='..'/lib                                     
> AUTOM4TE_CFG='\
> ../lib/autom4te.cfg'         ../bin/autom4te      -B '..'/lib -B '..'/lib 
> --lan\
> guage M4sh --cache '' --melt ./autoconf.as -o autoconf.in
> Perl 5.006002 required--this is only version 5.00503, stopped at 
> ../lib/Autom4t\
> e/General.pm line 35.
> BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at ../lib/Autom4te/General.pm line 35.
> BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at ../bin/autom4te line 41.
> *** Error code 255
> make: Fatal error: Command failed for target `autoconf.in'
> Current working directory /var/run/rpc_door/eggert/autoconf-2.68b/bin
> *** Error code 1
> make: Fatal error: Command failed for target `all-recursive'
> Current working directory /var/run/rpc_door/eggert/autoconf-2.68b
> *** Error code 1
> make: Fatal error: Command failed for target `all'
> 
> 
> Solaris 8 ships with Perl 5.005_03.  This satisfies Autoconf 'configure',
> which requires only 5.005_03 or better.  But
> lib/Autom4te/Getopt.pm and lib/Autom4te/General.pm
> require 5.006_002.

Thanks for the report.  These files are partly shared from automake; so
we would also have to fix it there.  Furthermore, since automake 1.12 is
probably also going to be released this month, fixing it now will also
benefit builds of automake on the same platform.

>  Not being a Perl expert, I don't
> know why they require the later version, or whether it's
> easy to fix them so that they require only 5.005_03
> (which would let me run the latest Autoconf on Solaris 8)
> or whether we should fix configure.ac so that it checks for 5.006_002
> or later, but anyway something should be done to improve on this
> build glitch.

Autoconf shows:

lib/Autom4te/ChannelDefs.pm:use 5.005;
lib/Autom4te/Channels.pm:use 5.005;
lib/Autom4te/General.pm:use 5.006_002;
lib/Autom4te/Getopt.pm:use 5.006_002;
lib/Autom4te/Struct.pm:use 5.005_03;

while automake shows:

lib/Automake/ChannelDefs.pm:use 5.005;
lib/Automake/Channels.pm:use 5.005;
lib/Automake/Config.in:use 5.006;
lib/Automake/General.pm:use 5.005;
lib/Automake/Getopt.pm:use 5.006_002;
lib/Automake/Struct.pm:use 5.005_03;

From those lists, the two projects share Channels.pm, Getopt.pm, and
Struct.pm.  But Getopt.pm originates its minimum of 5.6.2 thanks to
autoconf commit c3797b86ccbd9.  Does lowering the minimum requirement to
5.5 fix things, or do we need to revert that patch to actually re-add
the workaround that was dropped by that commit bumping to a newer
version of perl?

-- 
Eric Blake   address@hidden    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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