Re: Testsuite fails

[Pavel Roskin]

Hello, Tom!

> Pavel> AC_CHECK_TOOL([STRIP],[strip])
>
> Yes, I wasn't thinking.  I've removed this.
>
> Ideally we'd have some way to tell autoconf, "if this package can be
> cross-compiled, then check for a cross `strip' as well".  Maybe
> there's an ugly way to do this.

Actually, I think that Automake is wrong assuming that AC_CHECK_TOOL
requires config.{guess,sub}. It's no longer true for the CVS Autoconf.

The idea of AC_CHECK_TOOL is that if you are cross-compiling for e.g.
i386-aix, then configure should check for i386-aix-strip and for the
canonicalized form, i386-ibm-aix-strip. If the canonicalized form cannot
be found - no problem, don't check for it. Those who want to cross-compile
are supposed to be smarter than normal users - they'll fix it if it fails.
Not sure if Autoconf is doing exactly that, but at least configure runs
without asking for config.{guess,sub}.

A lot of code in Automake was written when Autoconf had no maintainer, so
Autoconf tried to compensate for Autoconf's shortcomings. It's time to
start getting rid of that code.

On the other hand, Autoconf still lacks the ability to add missing files.
But this should be fixed in Autoconf, not in Automake.

Maybe tracing will help. We probably need a special macro, e.g.
AC_REQUIRE_FILE, so that the macros will be able to indicate what files
they need. The only question is whether it should be processed by
Autoconf, Automake or both.

Regards,
Pavel Roskin