non-portable makefiles?

[Bob Friesenhahn]

If Makefile.in was generated under FreeBSD 5.0, then when I run the 
test 
suite, I see this happy output:

gmake[1]: Entering directory `/usr/home/bfriesen/build/GraphicsMagick-8-static'
PASS: Magick++/tests/test_exceptions.sh
PASS: Magick++/tests/test_appendImages.sh

If automake was run under Solaris 9 but the tests are then run under 
FreeBSD (in the same directory as before ) I see this less happy 
output:

gmake[1]: Entering directory `/usr/home/bfriesen/build/GraphicsMagick-8-static'
usage: dirname path
PASS: Magick++/tests/test_exceptions.sh
usage: dirname path
PASS: Magick++/tests/test_appendImages.sh
usage: dirname path

Apparently when automake is executed to generate Makefile.in, some 
saved information is OS-dependent.  That is bad.

I am using a VPATH build, and sometimes manually run automake in the 
source directory under Solaris.

I first noticed this problem while executing the development (alpha)
libtool tests.  The libtool bootstrap was executed under Solaris, but 
then I ran the libtool tests under FreeBSD.

Bob
======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden
http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen