SunOS 4.1.4 configure failure

[Roland Roberts]

I'm trying to build a package on SunOS 4.1.4 (yes, it's overdue for
retirement), using a configure script generated under SunOS 5.6 with
autoconf 2.57.  I've run into a couple of problems.  First, the system
has bash 1.14.3 installed.  This is bad---there is a bug in trap in
1.14.3 that causes exit traps to be inherited by child processes so
all the autoconf temporary files get deleted when child processes
exit.  And configure tries to rerun itself under bash if it can find
bash, which is does since bash is in the same path as gcc.

I've attempted to run configure via

    /bin/sh -c "CONFIG_SHELL=/bin/sh configure"

which produces numerous errors like so

    configure: /tmp/sh257515: No such file or directory
    configure: /tmp/sh257516: No such file or directory
    configure: /tmp/sh257517: No such file or directory
    configure: /tmp/sh257518: No such file or directory
    configure: /tmp/sh257519: No such file or directory
    configure: /tmp/sh2575110: No such file or directory
    configure: /tmp/sh2575111: No such file or directory
    configure: /tmp/sh2575112: No such file or directory
    configure: loading cache /dev/null
    checking for a BSD-compatible install... /bin/install -c
    checking whether build environment is sane... yes
    configure: /tmp/sh2575113: No such file or directory
    sed: conftest.sed: No such file or directory
    rm: conftest.sed: No such file or directory
    checking for gawk... gawk
    checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... configure: /tmp/sh2575114: No such 
file or directory
    no
    configure: /tmp/sh2575115: No such file or directory
    configure: /tmp/sh2575116: No such file or directory
    checking for gcc... gcc
    configure: /tmp/sh2575117: No such file or directory
    configure: /tmp/sh2575118: No such file or directory
    checking for C compiler default output... configure: error: C compiler 
cannot create executables
    See `config.log' for more details.

The final error is bogus.  gcc can create executables and if I edit
configure to remove the trap or remove simply the to "rm" lines near
the end of the trap, configure runs (albeit under bash).  config.log
is attached; I'm not sure why gcc fails in this mode because the PATH
elements look fine....

The problem I'm having is partially political---this package needs to
build easily on multiple systems including this SunOS 4.1.4 box.
Upgrading bash is *maybe* an option; I'm exploring that.  

roland
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Roland B. Roberts, PhD                             RL Enterprises
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config.log
Description: cofigure log from failed /bin/sh run