Re: Installing Autoconf 2.63 on MinGW

[Brian Dessent]

Jason Curl wrote:

> I've just downloaded mingw-1.0.11, installed m4-1.4.12 and ActivePerl
> 5.10.0. When I run configure it succeeds, but building autoconf fails
> complaining about needing GNU m4 1.4 or later.

Activestate?  That's most likely your problem.  AS Perl can't cope with
POSIX path translation.

> I've made links to perl, removed the old version of m4 so there's only 

Do you mean copies?  Because again, these tools don't know links.

> autom4te_perllibdir='..'/lib AUTOM4TE_CFG='../lib/autom4te.cfg'
> ../bin/autom4te -B '..'/lib -B '..'/lib         --language M4sh --cache
> '' --melt ./autoconf.as -o autoconf.in
> The system cannot find the path specified.
> autom4te: need GNU m4 1.4 or later: /usr/local/bin/m4

You asked ActiveState perl to run the autom4te perl script, which itself
proceded to attempt to invoke /usr/local/bin/m4, because that is the m4
that configure found.  But AS Perl has no earthly how to translate
/usr/local/... into anything meaningful, because it is a plain Win32
program.  You need MSYS perl that knows how to translate /usr/local/...
its actual Win32 path before invoking it.

You might also consider doing a VPATH style build.

Brian