Re: [bug-gawk] building gawk requires an awk?

[Alec Taylor]

Or just add it to the INSTALL file

On Sun, Nov 20, 2011 at 8:20 AM, Simon Josefsson <address@hidden> wrote:
> address@hidden writes:
>
>> Hi. Re this:
>>
>>> From: Simon Josefsson <address@hidden>
>>> To: address@hidden
>>> Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2011 15:24:22 +0100
>>> Subject: [bug-gawk] building gawk requires an awk?
>>>
>>> Hello,
>>>
>>> I was not able to build gawk 4.0.0 on a GNU/Hurd machine that didn't
>>> have any awk, the ./configure script failed at the end:
>>>
>>> config.status: creating Makefile
>>> ./config.status: line 1169: awk: command not found
>>> config.status: error: could not create Makefile
>>>
>>> Is this a known bootstrapping issue?  Same happened for 3.1.8.  I looked
>>> in README but didn't find anything obvious.
>>>
>>> Btw, building 'mawk' first and then gawk 4.0.0 works.  Running self
>>> checks didn't work because there is no 'cmp' on the system either...
>>>
>>> /Simon
>>
>> It could be considered a known issue. Autoconf/configure assume a Unix-like
>> environment, which would include some kind of awk.
>>
>> There isn't anything I can do about it, really, nor do I want to cater to a
>> system that doesn't even have cmp.
>>
>> Your solution to build mawk first works.  Really, whoever is packaging
>> up the Hurd should build a real distribution that includes the standard
>> GNU tools already built.
>
> Understandably!  Possibly there could be something about this in the
> documentation, awk is such a low-level tool that it probably comes up in
> bootstrapping regulary.  The bootstrapping procedure is thus: build
> mawk, then build gawk and package that and future builds can build gawk
> using gawk.
>
> Maybe this e-mail could in a README_d/README.bootstrap...
>
> Thanks,
> /Simon
>