Re: autotest fails when pwd is testgroup directory

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hi Eric,

* Eric Blake wrote on Wed, Apr 05, 2006 at 03:21:46PM CEST:
> According to Stepan Kasal on 4/1/2006 9:15 AM:

> > +      AS_MKDIR_P([$at_group_dir]) ||
> >     AS_ERROR([cannot create $at_group_dir])
> 
> I just noticed that AS_MKDIR_P already does AS_ERROR (fatal to the script)
> if it fails,

Which sucks, frankly.  Another badly designed interface that now is less
generally usable than it could be.  And we have to stick to it because
2.59 has it, too.  Wish we had chosen a worse name..

> so the AS_ERROR in autotest/general.m4 is now redundant with
> the one built in to m4sh.m4.

> Also, should we document AS_ERROR and friends in autoconf.texi?

Well, we certainly don't want people to prefer it over AC_MSG_ERROR or
AC_MSG_FAILURE.

> Also, AS_MKDIR_P is not threadsafe if mkdir -p is not supported, is
> that a problem?

It may be a problem, yes.  I don't know.

It'd help if you split the patch as Noah indicated.  (And you can
probably just drop the space-tab fixups, I'll do them all in one go.)

Cheers,
Ralf

>       * doc/autoconf.texi (Programming in M4sh): Document that
>       AS_MKDIR_P exits the script on failure.
>       * lib/m4sugar/m4sh.m4 (AS_SHELL_SANITIZE, AS_MESSAGE, AS_WARN)
>       (AS_ERROR, AS_MKDIR_P, _AS_DIRNAME_PREPARE, _AS_MKDIR_P_PREPARE)
>       (_AS_TR_*PREPARE): Improve documentation.
>       * lib/autotest/general.m4: Remove redundant AS_ERROR.  Cleanup
>       space followed by tab.