misleading output from AC_PROG_AWK

[Ben Pfaff]

I'm passing along the following bug report that was reported
against the Debian package for Autoconf 2.61.  I've looked over
the Autoconf git repository and I don't see any changes in this
area since 2.61.

This really is a generic cosmetic issue with AC_CHECK_PROGS: if
the first binary tested for is not the most generic name for the
program, then assigning to the overriding variable will seem to
find that first binary instead of the generic program.

Clint Adams <address@hidden> writes:
> I want @AWK@ to be equal to 'awk' so it will not introduce an
> unnecessary dependency on whichever of gawk, mawk, or nawk it
> finds first in the buildd chroot.  Therefore I am forced to
> pass AWK=awk to configure, which then provides the following
> output.
>
> checking for gawk... awk
> checking whether make sets $(MAKE)... yes
> checking for gawk... (cached) awk
>
> In this case, awk is not gawk, and configure is not actually
> searching for gawk, so this AC_PROG_AWK output is misleading.

-- 
Ben Pfaff 
http://benpfaff.org