As the title suggests configure scripts generated with autoconf 2.65 fail to execute of QNX4 due to a bug in grep on that platform. This email is a suggestion for a workaround for that bug.
I use autoconf for several projects that run on QNX4 amoung many other platforms. I've been using autoconf 2.61 due to another bug in autoconf 2.64 and found that 2.65 has fixed THAT bug, but fails because of the bug in grep on QNX4. Reference platform ubuntu 10.4 autoconf 2.65 Details: Line 2542 of /usr/share/autoconf/autoconf/autoconf.m4f and line 406 of /usr/share/autoconf/autoconf/status.m4 contain the following line: ac_delim_num=`echo "$ac_subst_vars" | grep -c '$'` grep -c '$' on QNX4 ALWAYS returns 0; this is the bug with grep on QNX4. As QNX4 is not fully supported, it is unlikely that this bug will be fixed, at least not in the short term. However, grep -c '^' works fine on QNX4 (and other platforms I've tested). As the purpose of the above line of code in autoconf appears to be to count the number of lines of substitute variables, then counting the number of "start of lines" as opposed to the number of "end of lines" would result in the same result, and presumably will work on the same platforms that the current code works on. grep -c '^' works as expected in a configure script on the reference platform. Proposed "bug" fix is to replace line 2542 of /usr/share/autoconf/autoconf/autoconf.m4f and line 406 of /usr/share/autoconf/autoconf/status.m4 with the following line: ac_delim_num=`echo "$ac_subst_vars" | grep -c '^'` Thanks for your attention, Mark -- * Mark Hessling, [email protected] http://www.rexx.org/ * Author of THE, a Free XEDIT/KEDIT editor, Rexx/SQL, Rexx/CURL, etc. * Maintainer of Regina Rexx interpreter and Rexx/Tk * Use Rexx? join the Rexx Language Association: http://www.rexxla.org/
