Re: autoconf 2.50 tests and cache

[Akim Demaille]

| In addition to the problem outlined in the message below, it seems the
| address address@hidden listed in the README is erroneous :)

Fixed, thanks!

| I am having problems installing the newly released autoconf 2.50.
| 
| I use a single cache file for all packages I configure (by setting
| cache_file).  When doing the tests ("make check" IIRC) for autoconf 2.50, it
| seems to pollute this cache file.  Specifically, it seems to be happening
| around compile.at:154, where it sets CPP to "./mycpp".  This value is then
| stored in the cache file, and then all further tests involving CPP fail,
| because they are (presumably) expecting a real pre-processor.

Hm...

CC is changed too.  Too bad.

| I have temporarily unset cache_file as a work-around.  All the tests are
| passing now.

I think that's not a work around, that's the way it should be :)

OTOH, we must be sure the cache handling works, which probably means
building other dedicated tests.

Also, I have sometimes considered the possibility of having the test
suite build its own cache.  The good point is that it would give us a
means to compare the behavior of two Autoconves on the same
architecture (just compare the `profile' described by the cache,
that's what Jim does), and the bad one is that we might have some
tests which are not run because of a previous test.  Not to mention
the added risk of having two runs of the test suite behave differently
because of different states of the cache.

I'd like to hear opinions from the co-maintainers...

Maybe the solution is in between: adding a new test which runs all the
macros, and preserve the cache.