[GNU Autoconf 2.63] testsuite: 8 failed

[Bruno Haible]

On a Linux/x86 system, I'm getting a test failure:

  7: autoconf --trace: builtins                      ok
  8: autoconf: forbidden tokens, basic               FAILED (tools.at:360)
  9: autoconf: forbidden tokens, exceptions          ok

The file tests/testsuite.dir/008/testsuite.log is as follows:
===============================================================================
#                             -*- compilation -*-
8. tools.at:339: testing ...
./tools.at:350: autoconf --force 
stderr:
configure.ac:2: error: possibly undefined macro: m4_foo
      If this token and others are legitimate, please use m4_pattern_allow.
      See the Autoconf documentation.
configure.ac:3: error: possibly undefined macro: _m4_bar
configure.ac:4: error: possibly undefined macro: AS_FOO
configure.ac:5: error: possibly undefined macro: _AS_BAR
configure.ac:6: error: possibly undefined macro: dnl
./tools.at:350: sed 's/^[^:]*m4[.ex]*: *\([^:]*:\) *\([0-9][0-9]*: \)/m4:\1\2/
        s/^\([^:]*:\) *\([0-9][0-9]*:\)[^:]*m4[.ex]*: /m4:\1\2 /
        s/: C\(annot open \)\([^`:]*\):/: c\1`\2'\'':/
        s/: include:\( cannot open\)/:\1/
        s/^autom4te: [^ ]*m4[.ex]* /autom4te: m4 /
        s/ (E[A-Z]*)$//
    ' stderr >&2
Not enabling shell tracing (command contains a `...` command substitution)
./tools.at:350: /bin/sh -n configure
./tools.at:360: autoconf
--- /dev/null   2003-09-23 19:59:22.000000000 +0200
+++ /build/autoconf-2.63/tests/testsuite.dir/at-groups/8/stderr 2008-09-11 
00:12:41.000000000 +0200
@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
+configure.ac:2: error: possibly undefined macro: m4_foo
+      If this token and others are legitimate, please use m4_pattern_allow.
+      See the Autoconf documentation.
+configure.ac:3: error: possibly undefined macro: _m4_bar
+configure.ac:4: error: possibly undefined macro: AS_FOO
+configure.ac:5: error: possibly undefined macro: _AS_BAR
+configure.ac:6: error: possibly undefined macro: dnl
./tools.at:360: exit code was 1, expected 0
8. tools.at:339: 8. autoconf: forbidden tokens, basic (tools.at:339): FAILED 
(tools.at:360)
===============================================================================

When I rename my $HOME/.autom4te.cfg to some other filename, the test
succeeds. When I rename it back, the test fails again. The contents of my
$HOME/.autom4te.cfg is as described in the autoconf manual, section
"Customizing autom4te":

============================== $HOME/.autom4te.cfg ============================
begin-language: "Autoconf"
args: --no-cache
end-language: "Autoconf"
begin-language: "Autoconf-without-aclocal-m4"
args: --no-cache
end-language: "Autoconf-without-aclocal-m4"
===============================================================================

Peeking at the test source:

# Second run should succeed and yield no output.
AT_CHECK([autoconf])

The test is apparently assuming that the second autoconf run will produce no
error messages because of the cache. But I disabled the cache on my machine...

Bruno