Re: Bug#196648: gettext: duplicate line in macro causes gettext to fail utterly (fwd)

[Michael C. Toren]

> Anyway, I don't like the idea of closing a bug just because you don't
> reproduce it anymore under testing. For every thing there is a cause,
> and we would like to know the cause for the bug you experienced.

Hi,

I'm also experiencing the bug that Luke Schierer <address@hidden>
reported in Debian Bug#196648, running gettext 0.12.1-1.  While attempting
to determine the smallest possible configure.ac file I could use that would
still cause trouble, I was surprised to learn that even a zero length
configure.ac file was affected:

    $ aclocal 
    aclocal: /usr/share/aclocal/lib-prefix.m4: 16: duplicated macro 
`AC_LIB_ARG_WITH'
    aclocal: `configure.ac' or `configure.in' is required

    $ touch configure.ac
    $ ls -l configure.ac 
    -rw-r--r--    1 mct      mct             0 Jun 29 16:33 configure.ac

    $ aclocal 
    aclocal: /usr/share/aclocal/lib-prefix.m4: 16: duplicated macro 
`AC_LIB_ARG_WITH'

    $ aclocal --version
    aclocal (GNU automake) 1.4-p4

    Copyright (C) 1999 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
    This is free software; see the source for copying conditions.  There is NO
    warranty; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.

    Written by Tom Tromey <address@hidden>

In an earlier message, Bruno Haible <address@hidden> suggested replacing
lines 14 through 16 of /usr/share/aclocal/lib-prefix.m4 with:

        ifdef([AC_HELP_STRING],
        [AC_DEFUN([AC_][LIB_ARG_WITH], [AC_ARG_WITH([$1],[[$2]],[$3],[$4])])],
        [AC_DEFUN([AC_L][IB_ARG_WITH], [AC_ARG_WITH([$1],[$2],[$3],[$4])])])

Which does appear to correct the problem!  Thanks Bruce.

Santiago, can you please incorporate this change into the Debian
package?  I've included a diff below.

Does anyone have any idea why only some systems appeared to be affected
by this problem?

Thanks,
-mct

--- /usr/share/aclocal/lib-prefix.orig  2003-06-29 16:42:17.000000000 -0400
+++ /usr/share/aclocal/lib-prefix.m4    2003-06-29 16:46:23.000000000 -0400
@@ -12,8 +12,8 @@
 dnl similar to AC_ARG_WITH in autoconf 2.52...2.57 except that is doesn't
 dnl require excessive bracketing.
 ifdef([AC_HELP_STRING],
-[AC_DEFUN([AC_LIB_ARG_WITH], [AC_ARG_WITH([$1],[[$2]],[$3],[$4])])],
-[AC_DEFUN([AC_LIB_ARG_WITH], [AC_ARG_WITH([$1],[$2],[$3],[$4])])])
+[AC_DEFUN([AC_][LIB_ARG_WITH], [AC_ARG_WITH([$1],[[$2]],[$3],[$4])])],
+[AC_DEFUN([AC_L][IB_ARG_WITH], [AC_ARG_WITH([$1],[$2],[$3],[$4])])])
 
 dnl AC_LIB_PREFIX adds to the CPPFLAGS and LDFLAGS the flags that are needed
 dnl to access previously installed libraries. The basic assumption is that