Re: hello-2.1.91 build failure on MacOS X

[Bruno Haible]

Ralf Wildenhues wrote:
> We could ask help2man to have it return a different exit
> status if it gets an exit status of 126 from the program, and have it
> return 63 then, which `missing' will interpret as version mismatch.

Uuhhh. I'm not sure you get a defined exit status when you try to execute
a program from a different platform. On older platforms, such as SunOS 4,
an executable from a different platform was piped into /bin/sh by the
exec() calls, yielding tons of error messages. Nowadays, ELF has an ABI tag
in the header that should make the recognition of the executables
unambiguous, but not all platforms use ELF.

> I can take this to bug-help2man if we can agree on proposing the change.

Why would it be help2man's business to deal with cross-compiles? IMO it
is configure's business. What do you think about this patch?

Bruno


*** configure.ac        23 Aug 2006 15:41:08 -0000      1.16
--- configure.ac        23 Aug 2006 20:34:55 -0000
***************
*** 34,39 ****
--- 34,41 ----
  # GNU help2man creates man pages from --help output; in many cases, this
  # is sufficient, and obviates the need to maintain man pages separately.
  AM_MISSING_PROG(HELP2MAN, help2man)
+ # The variable 'cross_compiling' is set by AC_PROG_CC.
+ AC_SUBST([cross_compiling])
  
  # i18n support from GNU gettext.
  AM_GNU_GETTEXT_VERSION([0.15])
*** man/Makefile.am     22 Aug 2006 20:27:16 -0000      1.7
--- man/Makefile.am     23 Aug 2006 20:34:55 -0000
***************
*** 28,31 ****
  # binary when any source file changes, only the main one.
  # Use -o so that the `missing' program can infer the output file.
  hello.1: $(top_srcdir)/src/hello.c $(common_mandeps)
!       $(HELP2MAN) --name="Friendly Greeting Program" ../src/hello -o $@
--- 28,31 ----
  # binary when any source file changes, only the main one.
  # Use -o so that the `missing' program can infer the output file.
  hello.1: $(top_srcdir)/src/hello.c $(common_mandeps)
!       test $(cross_compiling) != no || $(HELP2MAN) --name="Friendly Greeting 
Program" ../src/hello -o $@