Re: Bug in gnulib-tools prevents bison from bootstrapping

[Hans Aberg]

On 22 Jun 2007, at 14:55, according to Eric Blake:

> According to Hans Aberg on 6/22/2007 6:13 AM:
> > Autoconf requires the latest m4, but it actually calls gm4 it  
> > seems. So
> > I installed the latest M4, which ended up in /usr/local/bin/m4 on my
> > system, and added a soft link
> >   /usr/local/bin/gm4 -> /usr/local/bin/m4
> > Then it worked.
>
> Autoconf finds a working version of GNU m4 as part of its installation
> process.  On your machine, it must have found that gm4 was the correct
> name for the GNU m4 that was installed at the time you configured
> autoconf.  Alternatives to your symlink proposal, which are  
> somewhat more
> kosher for system maintainers,

I am not sure the above explanation holds up, because I think I had  
a /usr/local/bin/m4 long before I had a /usr/local/bin/autoconf, and  
others on the Bison list experienced the same problem, but could not  
find its origin.

> would be either reconfiguring and
> reinstalling autoconf after you installed the more recent GNU m4,

I feel fairly sure I tried that, and it did not help.

> or using
> the --program-prefix=g option of m4's configure script to install  
> m4 as gm4.

My system has a /usr/bison/m4 and a /usr/bin/gm4, but no /usr/local/ 
bin/gm4, because later version of M4 odes not install it. So you need  
to check what exactly autoconf does, like simply trying to find gm4  
before trying m4, which would be wrong.

  Hans Aberg