Re: autoconf-2.50 problems with dnl

[Akim Demaille]

| Hi,
| 
| I'm running into autoconf errors when using dnl comments.
| 
| To reproduce:
|   - take gettext-0.10.38,
|   - replace m4/libtool.m4 and ltmain.sh with the ones from libtool-1.4,
|   - apply the appended patch to m4/gettext.m4,
|   - run "./aclocal.sh aclocal -I m4"
|   - run "automake --gnits --include-deps Makefile"
|   - run "autoconf"
| 
| I get
|   configure.in:1: error: possibly undefined macro: dnl
| 
| This is a regression versus autoconf-2.13.

It is not.  It is 2.50 that does a better job at catching your
problem.

/tmp/new/gettext-0.10.38 % autoconf                              nostromo Err 1
/tmp/new/gettext-0.10.38 % autoconf --version                    nostromo 17:47
Autoconf version 2.13
/tmp/new/gettext-0.10.38 % grep dnl configure                    nostromo 17:47
          dnl In autoconf-2.13 it is called $ac_given_srcdir.
          dnl In autoconf-2.50 it is called $srcdir.


| Note that I really want dnl comments, because if I use "#" the comments
| get replicated in the configure script, which I don't want (in order not
| to make the configure script larger than it already is).

I suppose you are referring to the patch I sent.  Well, at least the
comment outside the AC_DEFUN can safely be left as `#', as it does not
go into configure.

As far as the other comments are concerned, it turns out it is not
infrequent to go and dig into configure, it's useful.  The patches I
sent were reasonable wrt to this issue.

Feel free to submit a comment stripper if you prefer.  That should be
quite easy as there are not that many exceptions such as #include etc.

But please, don't make it harder to other people.



| *** gettext-0.10.38/m4/gettext.m4.bak Thu May 17 15:35:37 2001
| --- gettext-0.10.38/m4/gettext.m4     Thu Jun 14 15:23:09 2001
| ***************
| *** 181,186 ****
| --- 181,189 ----
|             ac_dir=`echo "$ac_file"|sed 's%/[^/][^/]*$%%'`
|             ac_dir_suffix="/`echo "$ac_dir"|sed 's%^\./%%'`"
|             ac_dots=`echo "$ac_dir_suffix"|sed 's%/[^/]*%../%g'`
| +           dnl In autoconf-2.13 it is called $ac_given_srcdir.
| +           dnl In autoconf-2.50 it is called $srcdir.
| +           test -n "$ac_given_srcdir" || ac_given_srcdir="$srcdir"
|             case "$ac_given_srcdir" in
|               .)  top_srcdir=`echo $ac_dots|sed 's%/$%%'` ;;
|               /*) top_srcdir="$ac_given_srcdir" ;;
| 
|