Re: FYI : [bug #5618] make 3.80 does not configure under SunOS4 -> [solution !]

[Paul Eggert]

> From: "Paul D. Smith" <address@hidden>
> Subject: Re: FYI : [bug #5618] make 3.80 does not configure under SunOS4 -> 
> [solution !]
> Date: Tue, 16 Mar 2004 00:34:54 -0500
> 
> It doesn't appear to me that the autoconf developers have any intention
> of changing the autoconf-generated output to avoid this bug.

Yes, that's correct.  As I recall, it was too painful to work around
the bug.  Part of the problem is that almost nobody uses SunOS 4.x any
more, so it'd be hard to test any solutions.  However, if someone
would code up a reasonable fix for Autoconf and test it, we'd be happy
to incorporate the fix.

> I don't know if Sun released any patches to fix it before they gave
> up on SunOS 4.x altogether.

Nope.  Long ago Sun stopped issuing patches for SunOS 4.x, and as of
2003-10-01 (about the time Bill Joy left Sun :-) they stopped
supporting SunOS 4.x altogether, even in "we won't fix anything" mode.

Here's the bug in question:

Sun bug description
1123136 /bin/sh uses wrong PID for name of the temporary file created by cat << 
EOF
1134744 in-line input redirection into awk after exec of stdin and stdout
1170383 "here documents" within "command substitutions" fail much of the time 
in 4.1.x

The current suggestion for computer-museum curators etc. is to port an
old version of Bash to your SunOS 4.x host, and then use that.  If
'bash' is in your $PATH and if 'sh' doesn't have modern features,
'configure' will use 'bash'.  Another option is to use the SunOS 4.1.1
/bin/sh; it reportedly doesn't have the bug, and should run just fine
under later SunOS versions.