Re: tr and automake

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hi James,

* James Laird wrote on Mon, Oct 10, 2005 at 08:11:31PM CEST:
> 
> My package (hdf.ncsa.uiuc.edu/HDF5) has historically tested that the tr 
> utility works correctly at configure time.  Apparently there are two 
> kinds of tr which expect slightly different syntax for their input.

What are the exact differences?  What does "the other tr" do in the test
you quoted?

> We have now encountered a platform where setting the path to point to the 
> "correct" tr confuses the path to some libraries that the compiler needs.  

Let me guess: some w32 platform?

In general, two differences between execution from within `configure'
and outside are likely candidates for different behavior: setting of
PATH, and locale settings.  Just FYI.

> What we'd like to do is to set an environment variable for tr rather than 
> changing the global path.  We can change our own configure tests, but it 
> looks like aclocal.m4 uses tr by name.

Try using AC_PATH_PROG instead of AC_CHECK_PROG.  The program `aclocal'
has little business with tests that end up inside the file `aclocal.m4':
it merely collects all needed macros into that file.

> If aclocal is happy with either version of tr, so much the better.  If
> not, I'd like to suggest that it replace "tr" with the environment
> variable "$TR" and add a test in configure to ensure that the correct
> version of tr is being used.

Can't see where aclocal makes special use of "tr", see above.

I hope this random collection of comments helps you a bit.  If not,
please be more specific in what does not work for you (including error
output, used tools with versions, and, if possible, a small example to
reproduce the problem).  I have not understood what the problem is you
are describing.

Cheers,
Ralf

> Such a test might look like this:
> 
> AC_MSG_CHECKING([if tr works])
> if test "X${TR}" = "X"; then
>   TR=tr
> fi
> TR_TEST="`echo Test | ${TR} 'a-z,' 'A-Z '`"
> if test "${TR_TEST}" != "TEST"; then
>   AC_MSG_ERROR([tr program doesn't work])
> else
>   AC_MSG_RESULT([yes])
> fi