Re: texinfo-6.7.90 pretest on Solaris

[Gavin Smith]

On Sat, Feb 27, 2021 at 02:27:31PM -0600, Jacob Bachmeyer wrote:
> Gavin Smith wrote:
> > On Sat, Feb 27, 2021 at 12:22:33PM +0100, Bruno Haible wrote:
> > > > https://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/texinfo/texinfo-6.7.90.tar.xz
> > > A VPATH build on Solaris 10, with Solaris 'make', fails during "make 
> > > check":
> > > 
> > > Making check in texindex
> > > make  check-TESTS
> > > FAIL: tests/ti-helpversion.sh
> > > 
> > > Why is that? Because the 'texindex' script is not executable.
> > > 
> > > How come that the 'texindex' script is not executable? The Makefile has
> > > built the 'texindex' script like this:
> > > 
> > > Making all in texindex
> > > sed -e 's,[@]pkgdatadir[@],/home/haible/prefix-sparc64/share/texinfo,g'  
> > > -e 's,[@]TI_AWK[@],awk,g'  -e 's,[@]PACKAGE[@],texinfo,g'  -e 
> > > 's,[@][@]*VERSION[@][@]*,6.7.90,g' <../../texindex/texindex.in >texindex
> > > chmod +x ../../texindex/texindex
> > 
> > I don't understand how that is possible as
> > "chmod +x texindex" is hard-coded in the Makefile.
> 
> VPATH can bring along quite a bit of magic in some makes.  From
> (make)Missing:
> 
>   * In System V and 4.3 BSD `make', files found by `VPATH' search
>     (*note Searching Directories for Prerequisites: Directory Search.)
>     have their names changed inside command strings.  We feel it is
>     much cleaner to always use automatic variables and thus make this
>     feature obsolete.

Thanks for the information, that is really astounding.