Re: shell choking on `( in autoconf generated configure script

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hello,

* Hi There wrote on Sat, Oct 27, 2007 at 05:17:17AM CEST:
> http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=490042
> 
> My shell is choking on some gstreamer 0.10.14
> configure script lines that contain `( in them,
> causing the configure script to abort, outputting:
> 
> ./configure: line 29966: syntax error near unexpected token `('
> ./configure: line 29966: `  for ac_var in `(set) 2>&1 | sed -n 
> 's/^\([a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*\)=.*/\1/p'`; do'
> 
> A factor in the problem may be that /bin/sh is linked
> to zsh on my distro.
[...]
> I've tried
> zsh 4.3.4 (i686-pc-linux-gnu)
> zsh 4.2.6 (i686-pc-linux-gnu)
> GNU bash, version 3.2.0(1)-release (i686-pc-linux-gnu)

Confirmed.  This is a bug in bash 3.2.0(1), fixed in the very first
patchlevel <ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/bash/bash-3.2-patches/bash32-001>.

With /bin/sh being zsh, configure will search for a better shell, and
will find and use bash on your system.  You should be able to work
around it by using

  CONFIG_SHELL=/bin/sh /bin/sh ./configure [...]

(in this case ignore the shell function warnings zsh will cause
configure to emit at the beginning), or installing an updated patchlevel
of bash.  I don't see a reasonable way to work around this hideous bash
bug within Autoconf.

One thing I don't understand is why your bash gets the line number wrong
(it's one off).  I could only reproduce the error with 3.2.0(1), but
with the correct line number.

[...]
> This bug report lacks tests/testsuite.log because make
> check yields error:
> 
> make: *** No rule to make target `check'.  Stop.

This is just a followup error.

Cheers,
Ralf

> 
> Here's full output from configure in gstreamer
> 0.10.14:
> 
> checking for a BSD-compatible install...
> /System/Links/Executables/install -c
[...]
> ./configure: line 29966: syntax error near unexpected
> token `('
> ./configure: line 29966: `  for ac_var in `(set) 2>&1
> | sed -n
> 's/^\([a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*\)=.*/\1/p'`; do'