Re: windows.h: No such file or directory

[Jim Meyering]

John Taylor wrote:
> I'm trying to build coreutils-7.4 with a cross-compilator (gcc-4.4.1)
> that runs on i686-unknown-linux-gnu and produces code for
> x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu. When building coreutils, I get the following
> error message:
>
> ../../coreutils-7.4/lib/rename.c:33:21: error: windows.h: No such file
> or directory
...

That is an unfortunate consequence of the fact that the rename
module must perform a so-called "run" test to determine whether
it must work around certain rename bugs.
When cross-compiling, it assumes the worst.

However, in your case, the m4 macro could obviously do better,
knowing the target is linux/gnu-based.
A patch would be welcome.

> I found that I can fix this problem by adding
> gl_cv_func_rename_trailing_slash_bug=no to the configure arguments
> list. Is this the normal and recommended way to proceed? Are we in
> front of a bug, instead?

You've done the right thing.
Whenever you build using a cross-compiler, and for which
an executable created by that compiler cannot be run on the host,
you should manually seed the configure run with the ac_cv_* and gl_cv_*
environment settings (cache variables) corresponding to those tests,
so that the configure "run-tests" are not run at all.

Since the configure script cannot determine whether your target system
has a bug or feature, you must tell it via those cache variable settings.