Re: rhel8 test failure confirmation?

Karl Berry wrote:
> Hi Jacob,
>
>     The guess was the two most probable locations:  /usr/share/autoconf and 
>     /usr/local/share/autoconf.
>
> Wouldn't have worked on my own system :).
>
>     Challenge accepted.  
>
> Thanks!
>
>     if $PERL -I${autom4te_perllibdir:-$(sed -n \
>                   '/autom4te_perllibdir/{s/^.*|| //;s/;$//;s/^.//;s/.$//;p;q}' \
>                 <$(command -v autom4te))} -MAutom4te::FileUtils \
>              -e 'exit defined $INC{q[Time/HiRes.pm]} ? 0 : 1'; then
>        # autom4te uses Time::HiRes
>
> unfortunately we are highly restricted in what we can use in basic
> automake/conf shell code (as opposed to in the tests).  Neither the
> "command" command nor $(...) syntax can be used.
>   

Are you sure about that?  I got a fair bit of pushback on removing 
$(...) from config.guess (where it actually is a problem because 
config.guess is supposed to identify a variety of pre-POSIX systems and 
can be run independently of configure) on the grounds that Autoconf 
locates a POSIX shell and uses it for the bulk of configure (and the 
auxiliary scripts like config.guess).  Of course, Autoconf's "find a 
POSIX shell" logic does not help DejaGnu, which installs a copy of 
config.guess and runs it with /bin/sh according to its #! line...

> For the former, I think there's an autoconf/make macro to look up a
> program name along PATH?

 From a quick glance at the manual, that would be 
AC_PATH_PROG([AUTOM4TE], [autom4te]).

> [...]
>   
> Would you be up for tweaking the check to use such
> least-common-denominator shell stuff?
>   

Let's try:

AC_PATH_PROG([AUTOM4TE], [autom4te])
if test x$autom4te_perllibdir = x; then
  autom4te_perllibdir=`sed -n \
    '/autom4te_perllibdir/{s/^.*|| //;s/;$//;s/^.//;s/.$//;p;q}' <$AUTOM4TE`
fi
if $PERL -I$autom4te_perllibdir -MAutom4te::FileUtils \
         -e 'exit defined $INC{q[Time/HiRes.pm]} ? 0 : 1'; then
  ... 


The backslash-newline in the sed command was added as a precaution 
against line-wrap in email; the line could be combined.

> Ordinarily Perl could not be used either, but since Automake is written
> in Perl, I don't see a problem with doing so here. (If the system
> doesn't have Perl, Automake won't get far.)

If the system lacks Perl, autom4te will not work either.  The proposed 
test uses Perl to determine a characteristic of a program that is 
written in Perl.  :-)

> Not sure if $PERL is already
> defined by the time at which this would be run, but it should be
> possible to arrange with an ac prerequisite if needed.
>   

That should be easy enough to rearrange, since this check must come 
/after/ the autoconf version check---the pattern is only valid since 
autoconf-2.52f, but Automake requires autoconf-2.65 or later.


-- Jacob