Re: AC_PROG_CC problems on Windows with MKS Shell

[Lars J. Aas]

On Thu, Jan 11, 2001 at 10:37:01AM -0800, Wan-Teh Chang wrote:
: I am trying to use autoconf on Windows with the
: MKS Toolkit, which consists of a Korn shell and
: the usual Unix utilities.

Woopie doo, yet another Windows environment :)

[...]
: Now the fun part.  AC_PROG_CC fails for me for
: two reasons:
: 1. It tries to find the program 'cl' on the PATH.
:    However, the MKS shell takes the specified
:    pathname literally and does not automatically
:    append the .exe suffix.  I found that if I
:    manually modify the configure script to use
:    'cl.exe', then it works.

The Windows port of the Korn shell is the part that ought
to handle this detail IMO.

: 2. The PATH variable in MKS uses a semicolon (;)
:    as path separator so that pathnames can use
:    drive letters (C:, D:, etc.).  However,
:    AC_PROG_CC assumes colon (:) is the path
:    separator.  Again, if I manually modify the
:    configure script to use ; as path separator,
:    then it works.
: 
: Is there a macro that detects the path separator
: character (: or ;) for use in other macros such
: as AC_PROG_CC?
: 
: Can AC_PROG_CC be modified to look for 'cl.exe'
: instead of 'cl' on Windows?  I think that both
: Cygwin and U/WIN should be able to handle 'cl.exe'.

That would be a poor fix (you would for instance not be able to
envelope cl.exe with a bat-file if you lock the extension to .exe).

A better fix would be to have AC_PATH_PROG (or whichever macro it
is that searches for the compiler) to also consider implied exe-
extensions on systems that use them, and add the extension to the
returned program name.

In the mean time (which may be a while), invoke configure
like this:

  ./configure CC=cl.exe

  Lars J
-- 
Innovation is one percent inspiration and ninetynine percent perspiration,
and in my case; twice that...  -- Norville Barnes, `The Hudsucker Proxy'