Re: coreutils bootstrapping issue on non-GNU platforms

[Paul Eggert]

address@hidden (Bob Proulx) writes:

> If this bootstrapping issue could be avoided it would be nice.

I installed this patch to do that.  Thanks for reporting it.  Also, I
noticed the code uses "tail -1" which POSIX does not require support
for, so I fixed that too.

2006-12-30  Paul Eggert  <address@hidden>

        * gnulib-tool (SORT): Remove, since we no longer assume GNU sort.
        Rewrite so as not to assume GNU sort or "tail -1".  Also, don't
        assume the C locale, and avoid an "eval" that could cause trouble.
        Problem with SORT reported by Bob Proulx.

--- gnulib-tool 26 Dec 2006 18:42:09 -0000      1.204
+++ gnulib-tool 31 Dec 2006 06:29:50 -0000      1.205
@@ -66,12 +66,6 @@ if test -z "${AUTOPOINT}" || test -n "${
   AUTOPOINT="${GETTEXTPATH}autopoint"
 fi
 
-# GNU sort is needed. Set SORT to its location (not needed if it's called
-# 'sort' and already in the PATH).
-if test -z "$SORT"; then
-  SORT=sort
-fi
-
 # When using GNU sed, turn off as many GNU extensions as possible,
 # to minimize the risk of accidentally using non-portable features.
 # However, do this only for gnulib-tool itself, not for the code that
@@ -699,11 +693,14 @@ func_ln_if_changed ()
       s,^dnl .*$,,
       s, dnl .*$,,
       /AC_PREREQ/ {
-        s,^.*AC_PREREQ([[ ]*\([^])]*\).*$,prereqs="$prereqs \1",p
+        s,^.*AC_PREREQ([[ ]*\([^])]*\).*$,\1,p
       }'
-    eval `sed -n -e "$my_sed_traces" < "$configure_ac"`
+    prereqs=`sed -n -e "$my_sed_traces" < "$configure_ac"`
     if test -n "$prereqs"; then
-      autoconf_minversion=`for version in $prereqs; do echo $version; done | 
$SORT -g -u | tail -1`
+      autoconf_minversion=`
+        for version in $prereqs; do echo $version; done |
+        LC_ALL=C sort -nu | sed 1q
+      `
     fi
   fi
   if test -z "$autoconf_minversion"; then