Autoconf issues with AC_CONFIG_FILES

[larryjadams]

Hello,

I recently attempted to ./configure rrdtool and received error messages during 
the process.  The errors turned out to be associated with the AC_CONFIG_FILES 
statement in configure.ac and resulting output in the ./configure script.

When performing "autoconf" (v2.59 for cygwin), the resultant 
"ac_config_files=..." line does not start till after character position 300.

In my case, the AC_CONFIG_FILES had several entries, all entries were followed 
up with continuation characters.  I will demonstrate below.

It appears most *nix versions don't have issues with the white space, but 
cygwin (for reasons I don't understand) can not handle either continuation of 
multiple lines or continuation characters when the start of the expression does 
not begin after some number of white space characters in a current line.

Here are the details.

This command working in *nix but not cygwin:

AC_CONFIG_FILES([examples/shared-demo.pl                        
          examples/piped-demo.pl
          examples/stripes.pl
          examples/bigtops.pl
          examples/minmax.pl
          examples/cgi-demo.cgi
          examples/4charts.pl
          examples/Makefile
          doc/Makefile
          src/Makefile
          bindings/Makefile
          bindings/tcl/Makefile
          bindings/tcl/ifOctets.tcl
          bindings/python/Makefile
          Makefile])          

What was in place before and that used to work in cygwin but no longer works:

AC_CONFIG_FILES([examples/shared-demo.pl \
          examples/piped-demo.pl \
          examples/stripes.pl \
          examples/bigtops.pl \
          examples/minmax.pl \
          examples/cgi-demo.cgi \
          examples/4charts.pl \
          examples/Makefile \
          doc/Makefile \
          src/Makefile \
          bindings/Makefile \
          bindings/tcl/Makefile \
          bindings/tcl/ifOctets.tcl \
          bindings/python/Makefile \
          Makefile])

>From example 1, the resultant output in ./configure, with double quotes added 
>in order to emphasize that the command does not begin until column "x".

"                                                                               
                                                                                
 ac_config_files="$ac_config_files examples/shared-demo.pl 
 examples/piped-demo.pl
 examples/stripes.pl
 examples/bigtops.pl
 examples/minmax.pl
 examples/cgi-demo.cgi
 examples/4charts.pl
 examples/Makefile
 doc/Makefile
 src/Makefile
 bindings/Makefile
 bindings/tcl/Makefile
 bindings/tcl/ifOctets.tcl
 bindings/python/Makefile
 Makefile"
"

My question is, why is all this extra white space generated, and what do I have 
to do to get rid of it, or is this something the autoconf maintainers need to 
fix?

Thanks in Advance,

Larry Adams
The Cacti Group