Re: Messed up gl_COMPILER_PREPARE_CHECK_DECL

[Paul Eggert]

On 1/10/20 12:14 PM, Bruno Haible wrote:
> To let me reproduce it, please
>    - tell your autoconf version,
>    - tell your automake version,
>    - tell your m4 version,
>    - which is the source you're using? inetutils master branch?

I can reproduce the problem when building GNU Emacs on Fedora 31 
(Autoconf 2.69, Automake 1.16.1, m4 1.4.18) by running the following recipe:

mkdir d
cd d
git clone https://git.savannah.gnu.org/git/emacs.git
cd emacs
admin/merge-gnulib
./autogen.sh

This used the current versions of Emacs and Gnulib, which are Emacs 
commit 17cfd708575c351d030f8b05c5921d1867028d79 and Gnulib commit 
f5eb8cea72469348b423ae22068eeb9e1399011b. The last command attempts and 
fails to upgrade Emacs's copies of Gnulib to the current version of 
Gnulib, and its output ends like this:

Running 'autoreconf -fi -I m4' ...
configure.ac:1564: error: AC_REQUIRE(gl_COMPILER_PREPARE_CHECK_DECL): 
cannot be used outside of an AC_DEFUN'd macro
configure.ac:1564: the top level
autom4te: /usr/bin/m4 failed with exit status: 1
configure.ac:1564: error: AC_REQUIRE(gl_COMPILER_PREPARE_CHECK_DECL): 
cannot be used outside of an AC_DEFUN'd macro
configure.ac:1564: the top level
autom4te: /usr/bin/m4 failed with exit status: 1
autoreconf: /usr/bin/autoconf failed with exit status: 1