Re: new snapshot available: coreutils-7.2.66-428db1

[James Youngman]

"make check" fails in "doc" on a vanilla NetBSD5.0 system (released
yesterday) because no version of Perl is installed by default.   In
fact make fails without explanation:

$ make check
*** Error code 1

Stop.
make: stopped in /home/james/tmp/cu/coreutils-7.2.66-428db1/doc


I guess this is because some failing command starts with @.   Anyway,
re-running with make debugging turned on, we find that the problem is
that although configure determined that Perl was missing, it still
decides to run it:


$ make -d A check
[...]
*** Failed target:  sc-lower-case-var
*** Failed command: /bin/ksh
/home/james/tmp/cu/coreutils-7.2.66-428db1/build-aux/missing --run
perl -e 1 2> /dev/null && /bin/ksh
/home/james/tmp/cu/coreutils-7.2.66-428db1/build-aux/missing --run
perl -lne '/address@hidden/ or next; while (/address@hidden(.+?)}/g) { $v = $1; 
$v =~
/[A-Z]/ && $v !~ /^\\/ and (print "$ARGV:$.:$_"), $m = 1 } END {$m and
(warn "doc/Makefile: do not use upper case in address@hidden"), exit 1}'
./*.texi
*** Error code 1

Stop.
make: stopped in /home/james/tmp/cu/coreutils-7.2.66-428db1/doc
Applying :@ to ""
Result of :@ is ""


I believe the cause is not that I changed a timestamp and hence forced
a generated file to be regenerated, but simply that "make check" will
fail without Perl:

doc/Makefile contains:

syntax_checks = \
  sc-avoid-io           \
  sc-avoid-non-zero     \
  sc-avoid-timezone     \
  sc-avoid-zeroes       \
  sc-exponent-grouping  \
  sc-lower-case-var     \
  sc-use-small-caps-NUL

[...]

sc-lower-case-var:
        @$(PERL) -e 1 2> /dev/null && \
          $(PERL) -lne $(find_upper_case_var) $(srcdir)/*.texi



>From config.log:
configure:27190: checking for perl5.005 or newer
configure:27214: result: no
configure:27216: WARNING:
WARNING: You don't seem to have perl5.005 or newer installed, or you lack
         a usable version of the Perl File::Compare module.  As a result,
         you may be unable to run a few tests or to regenerate certain
         files if you modify the sources from which they are derived.

configure:27247: checking for sys/pstat.h



James.