Re: apparent bug in aclocal.m4

[Paul Eggert]

> From: Per Bothner <address@hidden>
> Date: Fri, 22 Feb 2002 17:24:24 -0800
> 
> I found a problem when trying to configure rhug with srcdir=".".
> It would try to mkdir /.deps.  The reason was (it seemed) to be a bug
> in configure.  Since configure is generated by autoconf, I took a
> look at cvs autoconf, which seemed to have a variant of the same
> problem in aclocal.m4.  However, since aclocal.m4 is also
> auto-generated, presumably the actual bug is somewhere else, but
> a 'grep' failed to find any other files matching 'Strip MF',
> so I don't know where to go next.

aclocal.m4 is generated by automake, and the real source is in
automake/m4/depout.m4.

> Anyway, I don't pretend to understand the code in aclocal.m4,
> but it certainly *looks* wrong to set dirpart to "", considering
> the mkdir "$dirpart/$DEPDIR" just below.

It seems odd, but on the other hand it looks intended (at least in
some situations, though apparently not your situation).  I'll send
this message to address@hidden, where the _real_ experts hang out;
perhaps they will explain and/or fix things.


>       --Per Bothner
> address@hidden   http://www.bothner.com/per/
> 
> Index: aclocal.m4
> ===================================================================
> RCS file: /cvsroot/autoconf/autoconf/aclocal.m4,v
> retrieving revision 1.18
> diff -u -r1.18 aclocal.m4
> --- aclocal.m4        11 Feb 2002 14:04:54 -0000      1.18
> +++ aclocal.m4        23 Feb 2002 01:07:08 -0000
> @@ -598,7 +598,7 @@
>    if (head -1 $mf | fgrep 'generated by automake') > /dev/null 2>&1; then
>      dirpart=`AS_DIRNAME("$mf")`
>    else
> -    dirpart=
> +    dirpart=.
>    fi
>    grep '^DEP_FILES *= *[[^ @%:@]]' < "$mf" > /dev/null || continue
>    # Extract the definition of DEP_FILES from the Makefile without