Re: Creating autotest testsuite gets stuck if package.m4.in contains unresolved substitutions

[Niels Lohmann]

I forgot the attachment.

On 05.02.2010, at 11:50, Niels Lohmann wrote:

> Hi there,
> 
> we have a project where we use the configure script to search for some helper 
> tools and write the paths to the package.m4 for the autotest test suite. We 
> do this with
> 
> configure.ac:
>       AC_PATH_PROGS(WGET, [wget], not found)
>       AC_PATH_PROGS(HEAD, [head], not found)
>       AC_PATH_PROGS(TAIL, [tail], not found)
>       ...
>       AC_CONFIG_FILES(tests/package.m4)
> 
> tests/package.m4.in:
>       m4_define([WGET], address@hidden@])
>       m4_define([HEAD], address@hidden@])
>       m4_define([TAIL], address@hidden@])
>       ...
> 
> A testcase using WGET can then check whether or not it is set to "not found" 
> and either continue the test or skip it.
> 
> This all works, but if (by accident), a check in configure.ac is deleted, say 
> than one for WGET, then tests/package.m4 ends up with an unresolved 
> substitution:
> 
>       m4_define([WGET], address@hidden@])
> 
> Then, creating the test suite using the makefile target
> 
>       $(TESTSUITE): $(srcdir)/testsuite.at
>               $(AUTOM4TE) --language=autotest -I '$(srcdir)' -o 
> address@hidden address@hidden
>               mv address@hidden $@
> 
> runs into an infinite loop, allocating lots of memory. I attached a zip file 
> containing the files and the command that reproduce this result.
> 
> 
> I have very little knowledge about what's going on in autom4te, and I know 
> that this scenario is a user error. However, I think that Autoconf should 
> give a warning if substitution remain unresolved -- anything but an infinite 
> loop would be helpful.
> 
> More information:
> 
>       m4 (GNU M4) 1.4.13
>       autoconf (GNU Autoconf) 2.65
> 
> Best regards,
> Niels.

example.zip
Description: Zip archive