Re: Building ncurses with libtool (32/64 bit)

[Thomas Dickey]

On Sat, 17 Jan 2004, Albert Chin wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 18, 2004 at 12:03:22AM +1000, Kevin Ryde wrote:
> > Thomas Dickey <address@hidden> writes:
> > >
> > > perhaps.  But there's no AC_REQUIRE connecting any of the pieces.
> > > If there were an AC_REQUIRE, the expected behavior would be to
> > > force AC_PROG_LIBTOOL to expand before the macro.  Since there is
> > > none, it should expand within.
> >
> > If we're talking about libtool 1.5, then notice the first thing
> > AC_PROG_LIBTOOL does is an AC_REQUIRE of _AC_PROG_LIBTOOL.  :-(
>
> So the fac that AC_PROG_LIBTOOL AC_REQUIRE's something is the fault
> (i.e. a bug in AC_REQUIRE)?

Basically.  I recall some discussion on the mailing regarding why this is
done - now.  It wasn't that way in autoconf 2.13, so people occasionally
ask why a shell if/then/else/fi doesn't work properly when using one of
the macros in the newer version.

However, the documentation on AC_REQUIRE doesn't make a point of telling
this - nor why (at least a rereading of it the other night didn't show me
the issue).  It would be nice if the people who implemented the changes
would document the limitation so we don't have to rediscover this.

(even better would be to fix the code so macro expansions are textually
in place)

-- 
Thomas E. Dickey
http://invisible-island.net
ftp://invisible-island.net