bug#9354: wishing to build, ./configure runs eternally

[Glenn Morris]

> I entered the resulting source directory emacs-23.3 and ran ./configure.
>
> Then ./configure started to check and when it ended, without pause, it 
> repeated the same checkings, and again and again...

It should not take configure more than a minute or so to run on a
reasonably modern machine.

Please try running configure from a clean start like:

./configure |& tee conf.log

Do you get to a point that looks like this:

    Configured for `x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu'.

    Where should the build process find the source code?...
    [...]
    Does Emacs use toolkit scroll bars?                     yes

    configure: creating ./config.status
    [...]

If so, please post conf.log from the start up to that point and say the
next 100 lines. Otherwise, please try to find the point at which it
starts to repeat itself and post everything up to that and the next 100
lines.