Re: [PATCH] Fix for bootstrapping with latest CVS Autoconf

[Gary V. Vaughan]

On Thu, Oct 12, 2000 at 12:38:11PM +0200, Morten Eriksen wrote:
> 
> BTW, I noticed something which looks a bit strange to me. Beginning at
> approximately line 2180 of libtool.m4 (from the head CVS branch),
> there are a lot of shell variables which are set up. But some of them
> are just set to their current value, for instance like this:
> 
> [...]
> # The host system.
> host_alias=$host_alias
> host=$host
> [...]
> # A symbol stripping program
> STRIP=$STRIP
> 
> # Used to examine libraries when file_magic_cmd begins "file"
> MAGIC_CMD=$MAGIC_CMD
> 
> # Used on cygwin: DLL creation program.
> DLLTOOL="$DLLTOOL"
> 
> # Used on cygwin: object dumper.
> OBJDUMP="$OBJDUMP"
> 
> # Used on cygwin: assembler.
> AS="$AS"
> [...]
> 
> ..etc, etc. What is the point in doing this?

It's all part of a big here document that writes the results of the
tests run by libtool.m4 to the start of the generated libtool script.

For example libtool.m4 contains tests which discover that on the host
system, MAGIC_CMD needs to be /usr/bin/file, so it writes the
following snippet into the libtool script:

    # Used to examine libraries when file_magic_cmd begins "file"
    MAGIC_CMD="/usr/bin/file"

And that, in turn is generated by the here document you quoted above.

Cheers,
        Gary.
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