RE: GNATS needs some work (autoconf/59)

[Tim Van Holder]

> Personally, at least for the time being, we don't care about HOST: as
> said by Pavel, only specific packages will need it, and they certainly
> need it so badly that they already perform their tests.  And if they
> don't, the simple fact that Autoconf supports some HOST-path-sep test
> will not make these package HOST-path-sep aware.
> 
> So let's drop this.
Okidoki.

> But BUILD-path-sep *does* matter, and will be a significant win.
I agree.

> Could you describe precisely how it works?  In fact, may I ask you to
> complete the documentation of PATH in autoconf.texi to explain how it
> works on Cygwin and DJGPP?  Maybe Earnie would have good hints to
> give.
No problem.

> Because I seem to have understood we kinda can have ; or : as a PATH
> sep on Cygwin.  But then, the test suggested above might not be right,
> since we will have to adjust ourselves to the choice made by the
No, on DJGPP both are possible (in bash only) - cygwin's bash seems to
always use ':' (with special magic to get around using drivespecs).

> user.  Autoconf by itself does not care extending PATH, it wants to be
> able *split* it.
Autoconf itself, yes. But the result of this test would also be
AC_SUBST'ed in the build scripts (and the testsuite), where it could be
used to set the path (in fact, the autoconf testsuite unconditionally
prepends the builddir to the path, using a ':').
This is why we probably want to use ';' on DJGPP, as only bash is
(currently) smart enough to understand both ':' and ';'.

> Hm, let them be in AS_, forget Autoconf.
OK.

> PS/ Could you also add some doc about COMSPEC etc. in autoconf.texi?
> You're currently burned for code, but documenting is OK :)
I know. Would be easier if the docs were generated from the sources; I
keep forgetting to add to the docs because they're in a separate file
(heck, they're in a separate directory even :-)).

I'll try to get a patch together soon (including docs); but the last
few days I seem to be spending more time reading the influx of mail
than I do hacking^Wcoding.