Re: [bug-gawk] building gawk requires an awk?

[Simon Josefsson]

address@hidden writes:

> Hi. Re this:
>
>> From: Simon Josefsson <address@hidden>
>> To: address@hidden
>> Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2011 15:24:22 +0100
>> Subject: [bug-gawk] building gawk requires an awk?
>>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I was not able to build gawk 4.0.0 on a GNU/Hurd machine that didn't
>> have any awk, the ./configure script failed at the end:
>>
>> config.status: creating Makefile
>> ./config.status: line 1169: awk: command not found
>> config.status: error: could not create Makefile
>>
>> Is this a known bootstrapping issue?  Same happened for 3.1.8.  I looked
>> in README but didn't find anything obvious.
>>
>> Btw, building 'mawk' first and then gawk 4.0.0 works.  Running self
>> checks didn't work because there is no 'cmp' on the system either...
>>
>> /Simon
>
> It could be considered a known issue. Autoconf/configure assume a Unix-like
> environment, which would include some kind of awk.
>
> There isn't anything I can do about it, really, nor do I want to cater to a
> system that doesn't even have cmp.
>
> Your solution to build mawk first works.  Really, whoever is packaging
> up the Hurd should build a real distribution that includes the standard
> GNU tools already built.

Understandably!  Possibly there could be something about this in the
documentation, awk is such a low-level tool that it probably comes up in
bootstrapping regulary.  The bootstrapping procedure is thus: build
mawk, then build gawk and package that and future builds can build gawk
using gawk.

Maybe this e-mail could in a README_d/README.bootstrap...

Thanks,
/Simon