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Message-ID: <3C45DADF.4070407@ece.gatech.edu>
Date: Wed, 16 Jan 2002 14:56:15 -0500
From: Charles Wilson <cwilson AT ece DOT gatech DOT edu>
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To: Eric Blake <ebb9 AT email DOT byu DOT edu>
CC: cygwin AT cygwin DOT com
Subject: Re: devel tool wrappers and --version, --help
References: <3C45D6B3 DOT B4808783 AT email DOT byu DOT edu>
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Eric Blake wrote:

> With the automake, autoconf, and libtool wrapper scripts presently in
> cygwin, the scripts do not gracefully handle --version and --help from
> an empty directory (that is, a directory with no configure.in):
> 
> $ cd /tmp
> $ autoconf --version
> autoconf: no input file
> $ automake --version
> automake: Couldn't find configure.ac nor configure.in file
> $ libtool --version
> libtool: Couldn't find configure.ac nor configure.in file
> 
> However, the *-devel versions work just fine in the same situation:
> $ /usr/autotool/devel/bin/autoconf --version
> autoconf (GNU Autoconf) 2.52
> ...


As do the *-stable versions:
$ /usr/autotool/stable/bin/autoconf --version
Autoconf version 2.13

 
> I would like to see this patched so that if any of these tools are
> executed but no configure.in is found, the wrapper scripts defer to the
> *-devel version, so that the --version and --help output is still useful
> instead of an error.  Unfortunately, I am not a shell script programmer,
> so I can't offer much assistance in this matter.


I have already been given a patch to do this, but I am a little 
concerned about implementation.  It makes sense to me, to defer to the 
-devel version, but I am concerned about ripple effects...

IMO, if you are libtoolizing (autoconf'ing, automake'ing) a new 
directory that has no existing configure.in, then the suggested 
solutions should be sufficient:
   create a temporary configure.in that has only "AC_REQUIRE(2.52)"
    or
   set path = /usr/autotool/devel/bin

Setting up the wrapper scripts to report one version or the other -- 
with no reason to prefer one over the other, such as a pre-existing 
configure.in file -- is just lying.

 
> Also, I think it might be a good idea when --version is passed to the
> wrapper scripts to append a line to the output of the *-stable or
> *-devel to further indicate the version of the wrapper script.  That
> way, I can recognize that the wrapper is automake 2.52 compliant even if
> it invoked in a directory which falls back on the automake-stable 2.13
> for execution.


No, changing the output format of the version string will break scripts 
that need to parse that output.  Such as configure itself.

--Chuck


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