broken grep on MacOS X [was: Autoconf-2.68b possible patch for FreeBSD, MacOS X]

[Eric Blake]

On 03/07/2012 06:56 PM, P. Martin wrote:
> On Mar 7, 2012, Paul Eggert <address@hidden> wrote: 
>>
>> Thanks, that helps.  The issue is clearly due to the limited
>> 'grep -E' implementation on that platform: it sometimes
>> (but not always!) complains 'Regular expression too big'
>> for a 938-byte regular expression in the test.
>>
>> I hope the following further patch,
>> diff --git a/tests/local.at b/tests/local.at
>> index 66027e8..40b7318 100644
> 
> 
> Good info.  Epic patch.  Problem sovled, and no fails. 
> Google search returns a bug in grep-2.5.1 with Lion + fix:
> https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=655339#c25
> Mine: grep (GNU grep) 2.5.1

Wow - that's scary reading.  Sounds like we should patch autoconf to
alter AC_PROG_GREP and friends to look specifically for define $GREP and
friends to 'arch -arch i386 grep' if we detect the broken grep.  But
since the brokenness is due to a decision based on an uninitialized
variable (explaining why it only hits randomly rather than on every
run), I'm not sure how to reliably flush it out - maybe just always
testing if 'arch' can run grep and using that in preference to plain
'grep' is sufficient.

-- 
Eric Blake   address@hidden    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature