On Sun, Aug 16, 2015 at 05:54:24PM +0200, Pierre Labastie wrote: > On 16/08/2015 15:24, Bruce Dubbs wrote: > > Rick Houkes wrote: > > > > Thanks for the research. I note in configure there is: > > > > for ac_prog in mawk gawk nawk awk > > do > > ... > > break > > done > > > > So we can fix this in several different ways: > > > > 1. Remove mawk from the host > > 2. Use the sed on the source > > sed -i 's/.:space:./ \t/g' ncurses/base/MKlib_gen.sh > > 3. Add AWK=gawk ./configure ... > > 4. sed s/mawk// configure > > > > I do not know where the mawk comes from in configure. It is not in > > configure.in. Perhaps the line: > > > > CF_PROG_AWK > > > > When I run autoconf on ncurses, the order of the search for awk is changed > > to > > > > for ac_prog in gawk mawk nawk awk > > > > so upstream is using an old, or at least different, version of autoconf. > > Well, ncurses upstream dev is the same person as mawk upstream dev, as far as > I understand... He may have done some custom modification to have mawk used > first. Actually, Debian has a package "autoconf-dickey", whose description is: > ---- > This hacked version of autoconf is required to bootstrap ncurses and some > other packages maintained upstream by Thomas Dickey. It should not be used for > other purposes. > ---- > Also Debian still uses a very old version of mawk (1.3.3 from 1996), while Th > Dickey has been improving it since 2009. Interesting story at > https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=554167 actually...
That made my day : everybody was hitting problems, but the distribution maintainer would not update to a new release, and supposedly doesn't trust upstream's code. > > > > I'm inclined to go with option 4 above, but would like other opinions. > > > > -- Bruce > > > Agreed > > Pierre Can we label the explanation as something like "to avoid using an old version of mawk if that is installed on the host system", with emphasis on 'old' ? Option 1 might conceivably damage the host system, so it doesn't sound like a good idea. I actually prefer option 3 (environment variable instead of a sed - we use sed a lot) if it works, but I won't object to 4. ĸen -- This one goes up to eleven: but only on a clear day, with the wind in the right direction. -- http://lists.linuxfromscratch.org/listinfo/lfs-dev FAQ: http://www.linuxfromscratch.org/faq/ Unsubscribe: See the above information page
