bad autom4te call by autoconf ?

[Andreas.P.Priesnitz]

Hello!

I'm a newbie in autoconf-ing, having (installation and) execution problems for 
autoconf 2.52b on alphaev67-dec-osf4.0f.
Might someone give me a hint?

During installation, no testing can be performed (I did not get this problem for
previous autoconf releases):

...
Making check in tests
make[1]: Entering directory
`/tmp_mnt/home/cfd1/home/cfd/alphaev67-dec-osf4.0f/autoconf-2.52b.obj/tests'
make  check-local
make[2]: Entering directory
`/tmp_mnt/home/cfd1/home/cfd/alphaev67-dec-osf4.0f/autoconf-2.52b.obj/tests'
autom4te_perllibdir='/tmp_mnt/home/cfd1/home/cfd/alphaev67-dec-osf4.0f/autoconf-2.52b/lib'
../bin/autom4te \
  -I /tmp_mnt/home/cfd1/home/cfd/alphaev67-dec-osf4.0f/autoconf-2.52b/tests -I
/tmp_mnt/home/cfd1/home/cfd/alphaev67-dec-osf4.0f/autoconf-2.52b -I
/tmp_mnt/home/cfd1/home/cfd/alphaev67-dec-osf4.0f/autoconf-2.52b/lib \
  atspecific.m4 suite.at -o testsuite.tmp
autom4te: no such file or directory: -o
make[2]: *** [testsuite] Error 1
make[2]: Leaving directory
`/tmp_mnt/home/cfd1/home/cfd/alphaev67-dec-osf4.0f/autoconf-2.52b.obj/tests'
make[1]: *** [check-am] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory
`/tmp_mnt/home/cfd1/home/cfd/alphaev67-dec-osf4.0f/autoconf-2.52b.obj/tests'
make: *** [check-recursive] Error 1
...

Testing seems to be relevant, though, as after installation I get for any
configure.ac :

% autoconf -v
autoconf: running /home/cfd1/alphaev67-dec-osf4.0f/bin//autom4te --verbose
--include /home/cfd1/share/autoconf --include . --warning syntax,
autoconf/autoconf.m4f    configure.ac --output configure
Unknown option: warning

In fact, the options passed to autom4te look bad.

As these failures are really essential, it seems more probable to me that the
error is on my side than due to a bug, but I don't know what it could be and I
did not find anything related in the mailing list.

The configure options I used for the installation are:
 --prefix=/home/cfd1
 --exec-prefix=/home/cfd1/alphaev67-dec-osf4.0f
 --srcdir=/home/cfd1/home/cfd/alphaev67-dec-osf4.0f/autoconf-2.52b
 --enable-shared
 --enable-static
 --disable-nls
 --without-gnu-as
 --without-gnu-ld
 --with-included-gettext

(all the latter serve conformance with other GNU packages that I install
by the same script and should be ignored by configure if irrelevant, I think)

The installation is performed by:

make install \
 prefix=/home/cfd1/stow/autoconf-2.52b \
 exec_prefix=/home/cfd1/alphaev67-dec-osf4.0f/stow/autoconf-2.52b


I will be grateful for any advice!
Andreas