Re: Autoconf issues with AC_CONFIG_FILES

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hi Larry,

* address@hidden wrote on Thu, Nov 17, 2005 at 11:53:15AM CET:
> 
> 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.

Indeed.  Confirmed with version 2.59.  I'm quite stunned to see this.  
This has been fixed in CVS Autoconf, but I could not tell you which
single change fixed it.

> 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.

Wow.  I did not know this either.  Good to know and look out for.

> 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?

Well, it has been fixed in Autoconf, but there hasn't been a release
since.  You can work around it by splitting into several AC_CONFIG_FILES
calls with a smaller number of arguments each, though.  And please drop
the backslashes for continuation -- they should not be necessary then
(I hope).

Cheers,
Ralf