grep-2.9.69-f91c on OSF/1

[Bruno Haible]

On OSF/1 5.1:

"make" succeeds, but "make check" fails:

$ make check
No suffix list.
Making check in po
Making check in lib
make  check-recursive
Making check in doc
Making check in src
Making check in tests
make  get-mb-cur-max
`get-mb-cur-max' is up to date.
make  check-TESTS
sh: VERSION=2.9.69-f91c: is not an identifier
*** Exit 1

It comes from tests/Makefile:

TESTS_ENVIRONMENT = \
  tmp__=$$TMPDIR; test -d "$$tmp__" || tmp__=.; \
  TMPDIR=$$tmp__; export TMPDIR;                \
  export                                        \
  VERSION='$(VERSION)'                          \
  ...

The syntax "export VAR=VALUE" is not guaranteed by this shell.
Either write "env VAR=VALUE ...", or "VAR=VALUE; export VAR; ..."

SHELL is defined as
SHELL = /bin/ksh

$ grep CONFIG_SHELL config.status 
SHELL=${CONFIG_SHELL-/bin/ksh}
  $as_echo "running CONFIG_SHELL=/bin/ksh $*" >&6
  CONFIG_SHELL='/bin/ksh'
  export CONFIG_SHELL

Strangely enough, this portability problem of the 'export' built-in
is well-known, but not mentioned in the Autoconf manual
<http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/html_node/Limitations-of-Builtins.html>.

Bruno
-- 
In memoriam Jan Opletal <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Opletal>