Re: Testing m4-1.4.21 on Mac OS X 10.6.8, Snow Leopard

On Fri, Feb 20, 2026 at 10:34:50AM +0100, Peter Dyballa wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> Testing M4 on this ancient OS produces some trouble, probably because of too old shell interpreters:

Thank you for the report.  I lack access to a MacOS system, so I
cannot reproduce the symptoms.  But the particular test failure you
are seeing comes from the gnulib testsuite, so I'm adding that list in
cc, in case it rings a bell with anyone else.

> 
> 	• pete 847 /\ /bin/sh --version
> 	  GNU bash, version 3.2.48(1)-release (x86_64-apple-darwin10.0)
> 	  Copyright (C) 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc.
> 	• pete 848 /\ /bin/ksh --version
> 	    version         sh (AT&T Research) 1993-12-28 s+
> 	• pete 853 /\ /bin/csh --version
> 	  tcsh 6.15.00 (Astron) 2007-03-03 (x86_64-apple-darwin) options wide,nls,dl,al,kan,sm,rh,color,filec
> 	• pete 855 /\ /bin/zsh --version
> 	  zsh 4.3.9 (i386-apple-darwin10.0)
> 
> /bin/sh is /bin/bash and /bin/csh is /bin/tcsh. When the test procedure starts to execute tests with ksh it gets stuck (from pstree):
> 
> 	...
> 	                                             \-+- 43236 macports /bin/sh ../build-aux/test-driver --test-name test-funclib-quote.sh --log-file test-funclib-quote.sh.log --trs-file test-funclib-quote.sh.trs --color-tests no --collect-skipped-logs no --enable-hard-errors yes --expect-failure no -- ./test-funclib-quote.sh
> 	                                               \-+- 43237 macports /bin/sh ./test-funclib-quote.sh
> 	                                                 \--- 43412 macports /bin/ksh ./test-funclib-quote.sh
> 	
> 	root 849 /\ lsof | ggrep test-funclib-quote.sh.log
> 	sh        43237       macports    1w      REG               14,2      1737 9519486 /opt/local/var/macports/build/m4-258498fb/work/m4-1.4.21/tests/test-funclib-quote.sh.log
> 	sh        43237       macports    2w      REG               14,2      1737 9519486 /opt/local/var/macports/build/m4-258498fb/work/m4-1.4.21/tests/test-funclib-quote.sh.log
> 	ksh       43412       macports    1w      REG               14,2      1737 9519486 /opt/local/var/macports/build/m4-258498fb/work/m4-1.4.21/tests/test-funclib-quote.sh.log
> 	ksh       43412       macports   11w      REG               14,2      1737 9519486 /opt/local/var/macports/build/m4-258498fb/work/m4-1.4.21/tests/test-funclib-quote.sh.log
> 
> I had to 'kill -1 43412' and another time when ksh was involved, in test-option-parser.sh. Here is an excerpt from test-suite.log (already sent by eMail):
> 
> 	~> func_quote expand: non-existent-2: "$empty" "${empty}"
> 	~> func_quote expand: `command`: `$aaa $empty${bbb}`
> 	== running in '/bin/ksh' ==
> 	/opt/local/var/macports/build/m4-258498fb/work/m4-1.4.21/tests/test-all-shells.sh: line 76: 43412 Hangup                  __GL_ALL_SHELLS_SHELL="$_G_abs_shell" "$_G_abs_shell" "$all_shells_script" ${1+"$@"}
> 	error: can't run in /bin/ksh
> 	== running in '/bin/zsh' ==
> 	~> func_quote eval: basic: a b c
> 	~> func_quote eval: spaces: space space tab	tab
> 	~> func_quote eval: empty_arg:   
> 	~> func_quote eval: globs: * .* [a-zA-Z0-9_] ? ~
> 	~> func_quote eval: variables: $aaa ${bbb} "${ccc} $ddd"
> 	~> func_quote eval: exclamation-mark: $! !$ !
> 	…
> 	~> func_quote expand: double-quotes: " " " "$bbb"
> 	~> func_quote expand: spaces:   	 ${ccc}
> 	~> func_quote expand: non-existent: $empty ${empty}
> 	~> func_quote expand: non-existent-2: "$empty" "${empty}"
> 	~> func_quote expand: `command`: `$aaa $empty${bbb}`
> 	FAIL test-funclib-quote.sh (exit status: 1)
> 
> Here are snapshots from the directory:
> 
>   drwxr-xr-x  11 macports  wheel   60622 19 Feb 22:35 .
>   -rw-r--r--   1 macports  wheel    1877 19 Feb 22:35 test-option-parser.sh.log
>     *kill -1*
>   -rw-r--r--   1 macports  wheel    5858 19 Feb 23:03 test-option-parser.sh.log
> 
> You can see that I had some perseverance while testing… Build and tests were done from the MacPorts package manager.
> 
> 
> --
> 
> Greetings
> 
>   Pete
> 
> I am concerned for you to enjoy yourselves within the limits of British decency.
> 				– Ivor Cutler
> 
> 

-- 
Eric Blake, Principal Software Engineer
Red Hat, Inc.
Virtualization:  qemu.org | libguestfs.org