Re: Build and test failures with Autoconf 2.70

[Zack Weinberg]

Karl Berry wrote:
> Zack Weinberg wrote:
>> They all appear to be cases of autoconf and/or aclocal
>> getting run when the test suite does not expect them to be run.  I am
>>  stumped as to why
>
> In short: because the 2.70 autom4te decided not to update configure.
>
> I don't know why not, but I have a guess: maybe the new autom4te
> ignores everything after AC_OUTPUT. Is that correct? Because that is
> where some of these tests are adding a new AC_ macro.
[...]
> in the successful run with autoconf 2.69, it was the
> $AUTOCONF run that updated configure (as one would expect).
>
> In the failing run with autoconf 2.70, the $AUTOCONF run ends with
> the line: autom4te: 'configure' is unchanged
>
> The failure follows.

Thanks, that was the clue I needed.  The newer autoconf wasn't
ignoring code after AC_OUTPUT, but what it *was* doing was leaving the
timestamp on configure untouched when a change in configure.ac did not
change the generated code.  (As if it were using move-if-change to
update configure.)  AC_LIBSOURCES doesn't change the generated code,
because it does all its work via traces, so those tests all failed.

I've fixed this in Autoconf trunk now
(revision 07130c3e48d12ec155ac5d7630dc7477b6989940)
and will shortly merge it to the 2.70 release branch.
With this patch applied, I see no failures in the Automake
testsuite on a GNU/Linux system.

zw

p.s. Sorry for the delay, I forgot I wasn't subscribed to any of the
Automake mailing lists.  I am now.