Re: Fw: bug in texi2dvi, and hack patch

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Mon, 24 Jan 2005 09:34:21 +0100
> From: Stepan Kasal <address@hidden>
> Cc: address@hidden, address@hidden, address@hidden, address@hidden,
>       address@hidden
> 
> Fix the problem exactly as reported:
> the configure script tests for the problem:
> 
>       AC_SUBST(TESTF, "test -f")
>       testfile=conf$$.exe
>       touch $testfile
>       if test -x $testfile; then
>               test -f $testfile || TESTF=:
>       fi
>       rm -f $testfile
> 
> and use
>       for dir in $PATH; do
>         if test -x "$dir/$1" && @TESTF@ "$dir/$1"; then
> or
>       testf="@TESTF@"
>       ...
>       for dir in $PATH; do
>         if test -x "$dir/$1" && $testf "$dir/$1"; then
> 
> in texi2dvi.in .

Could you please annotate this with explanations of how/why this is
supposed to work correctly?  I have trouble following the convoluted
logic, perhaps because I don't know enough about Autoconf.  (I also
don't know what results you expect from "test -x foo.exe" when foo.exe
is an empty file produced by "touch foo.exe".)

> Another way to fix the problem is to adopt the solution used by autoconf:
> make sure that the variable $ac_executable_extensions, which is set in
> config.site on some platforms, gets substituted:
> 
>       AC_SUBST(ac_executable_extensions)
> 
> and put the following to texi2dvi.in:
> 
>       for dir in $PATH; do
>         for exec_ext in '' @ac_executable_extensions@; do
>           if test -f "$dir/$1" && test -x "$dir/$1"; then
>               ...

I'm okay with this method, provided that ac_executable_extensions can
be computed reliably (you didn't say how).