Re: [platform-testers] texinfo-6.5.90 pretest on OpenBSD

[Bruno Haible]

Gavin Smith wrote:
> On 1/4/19, Bruno Haible <address@hidden> wrote:
> > On OpenBSD 6.3
> > - "awk: syntax error at source line 173 source file
> > ../../texindex/jrtangle"
> > - all tests fail!
> >
> > Logs attached.
> >
> 
> Thanks for testing this. The problem is that jrtangle should not be
> running in the first place. It is written in GNU awk and won't work
> with other versions of awk.

Then how about changing the Makefile rule to test whether 'awk' is
really GNU awk, and if no, do nothing and/or only print a warning?

> 'make' is considering texindex.awk to be out of date and that it needs
> to be rebuilt. However, when I extract texinfo-6.5.90.tar.xz, ti.twjr
> has an earlier modification time than texindex.awk

Experience has shown that you can't really always control whether 'make'
will consider a target to be out-of-date or not. The most reliable
approach (adopted in Autoconf and Automake) is to write the Makefile rule
in a way that it will not fail when the assumptions about the tools are
not met.

Bruno