On 04/22/2012 07:42 PM, Bruno Haible wrote: > Hi Stefano, > >>> FAIL: t/depcomp2 >>> ================ >>> >>> [SNIP] >>> ... >>> The file 'stderr' is not empty: It contains this two-line warning >>> >>> configure: WARNING: if you wanted to set the --build type, don't use >>> --host. >>> If a cross compiler is detected then cross compile mode will be used >>> >>> This is because I configured with the arguments >>> >>> --host=x86_64-pc-linux-gnu \ >>> --prefix=/home/bruno/data/build/prefix-linux-x86_64 \ >>> --libdir=/home/bruno/data/build/prefix-linux-x86_64/lib64 >>> >>> Apparently this led to a host_alias variable being passed to sub-configures: >>> >> The autoconf manual reads: >> >> For historical reasons, whenever you specify --host, be sure to specify >> --build too; this will be fixed in the future. > > It is safer for me in general to never use --build, only --host. > config.guess is always doing its job right [1]; if I used --build, I would > only increase the risk of mistakes. > Not if you do something like this:
./configure --host=whatever --build="`./lib/config.status`" >> Does the error disappear if you also pass the '--build' option to configure? > > The Autoconf manual says "this will be fixed in the future"; therefore > the Automake test suite should be prepared to work with just --host and no > --build option. > Well, the text in t/README is quite clear in explaining what you have to do if you want to run the testsuite with a cross compiler: For example, to run with a Linux-to-MinGW cross compiler, you will need something like this: ./configure --host i586-mingw32msvc --build i686-pc-linux-gnu To avoid possible spurious error, you really have to *explicitly* specify '--build' in addition to '--host'; the 'lib/config.guess' script can help determine the correct value to pass to '--build'. And I see that you've also already proposed a patch to fix the situation in autoconf proper (which is the best thing to do IMHO). So consider this part of the report labelled as a "wontfix". I will reply to the rest of the report tomorrow. Thanks, Stefano