Re: WORDS_BIGENDIAN not defined on sparc Solaris 10!

[Paul Eggert]

Jim Meyering <address@hidden> writes:

>       Don't hide the definition of WORDS_BIGENDIAN!
>       * lib/autoconf/c.m4 (AC_C_BIGENDIAN): Remove AH_VERBATIM whose
>       "#if defined __BIG_ENDIAN__" would effectively remove the definition
>       of WORDS_BIGENDIAN that is required on e.g., sparc-based systems.

Thanks for catching that.  What was supposed to happen is that
'configure' would generate config.h code that looks like this:

        /* Define WORDS_BIGENDIAN to 1 if your processor stores words
           with the most significant byte first (like Motorola and
           SPARC, unlike Intel and VAX). */
        #if defined __BIG_ENDIAN__
        # define WORDS_BIGENDIAN 1
        #elif ! defined __LITTLE_ENDIAN__
        # define WORDS_BIGENDIAN 1
        #endif

which will define WORDS_BIGENDIAN to 1 on Sparc.

The problem is that Autoconf recently changed to a different way of
substituting for #defines, and the old template in AC_C_BIGENDIAN wasn't
compatible with the new way of doing this.

I installed this fix:

2007-11-27  Paul Eggert  <address@hidden>

        Fix AC_C_BIGENDIAN bug caused by new awk method of substitution.
        * lib/autoconf/c.m4 (AC_C_BIGENDIAN): Don't comment out the
        #undef as this runs afoul of our new way of creating config.h.
        Problem reported by Jim Meyering in
        
<http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf-patches/2007-11/msg00164.html>.

--- a/lib/autoconf/c.m4
+++ b/lib/autoconf/c.m4
@@ -1401,7 +1401,7 @@ AC_DEFUN([AC_C_BIGENDIAN],
 #if defined __BIG_ENDIAN__
 # define WORDS_BIGENDIAN 1
 #elif ! defined __LITTLE_ENDIAN__
-/* #undef WORDS_BIGENDIAN */
+# undef WORDS_BIGENDIAN
 #endif])dnl
  AC_CACHE_CHECK([whether byte ordering is bigendian], [ac_cv_c_bigendian],
    [ac_cv_c_bigendian=unknown