Re: [PATCH] Don’t use AC_EGREP_CPP if affected by CFLAGS

[Bruno Haible]

Hi Paul,

> > This configuration issue comes up occasionally
> It's more than "occasionally", I'm afraid. I just did a Google search 
> for 'configure CFLAGS "-m32"' and in the first ten hits, more people got 
> it wrong than right. When the error rate is this high, it's appropriate 
> to change the code to make errors less likely.

I completely disagree. When the error rate is so high, we should
  1) improve the documentation (this is mainly install.texi from Autoconf),
  2) add a consistency check in AC_PROG_CC or AC_PROG_CPP.

Ad (1): I am frequently running configures on these kinds of systems.
Therefore I think I could come up with some practically usable text.

i386     Linux, CC="gcc -m32"
         Solaris
         Mac OS X
         Hurd
         FreeBSD
         NetBSD
         OpenBSD
         Haiku
         Cygwin
         Windows
m68k     Linux
mips     IRIX: 32, CC="cc -32"
               n32, CC="cc -n32"
                    CC="gcc -mabi=n32"
         Linux: 32-bit
                n32, CC="gcc -mabi=n32"
                64-bit, CC="gcc -mabi=64"
sparc    Solaris: 32-bit
                  64-bit
         Linux: 32-bit, CC="gcc -m32"
                64-bit, CC="gcc -m64"
         NetBSD: 32-bit, CC="gcc -m32"
alpha    Linux
hppa     HP-UX
         Linux
hppa64   HP-UX, CC="cc +DD64"
arm      Linux
arm64    Linux: 64-bit
         FreeBSD: 64-bit
powerpc  AIX: 32-bit, CC="xlc", CC="gcc"
              64-bit, CC="xlc -q64" AR="ar -X 64" NM="nm -X 64", CC="gcc 
-maix64" AR="ar -X 64" NM="nm -X 64"
         Linux: 32-bit, CC="gcc -m32"
                64-bit BE
                64-bit LE ELFv2
         Mac OS X
ia64     Linux
         HP-UX: 32-bit, CC="cc"
                64-bit, CC="cc +DD64"
x86_64   Linux
         Solaris
         Mac OS X, CC="gcc -m64"
         Linux x32, CC="gcc -mx32"
         GNU/kFreeBSD
         FreeBSD
         NetBSD
         OpenBSD
         Cygwin
         Windows
s390     Linux, CC="gcc -m31"
s390x    Linux

Ad (2): Before AC_PROG_CC included a check whether the compiler can actually
produce executables, people were frequently reporting odd issues (ranging from
nonexistent compiler commands, to LD_LIBRARY_PATH problems of cc1) to the 
mailing
lists. This check helped a lot.

> The patch does not eliminate all uses of AC_EGREP_CPP, only the uses 
> where it's common for builders to use idioms like "./configure 
> CFLAGS='-m32'" where CFLAGS unexpectedly affects the behavior that the 
> AC_EGREP_CPP code is testing for.

It is bad to have 3 ways of using configure - with the same intended result -,
when
  - 2 out of the 3 produce a 100% valid result,
  - 1 out of the 3 produces a 95% valid result.
People will then waste time to squash out the remaining 5% of bugs in the 3rd
way. It is much better to make it clear that the third way is unsupported.

> Many builders don't know that -m32 
> affects the preprocessor, and we can't really expect them to read some 
> obscure corner of the Gnulib manual to find this stuff out.

But we can expect them to try differently when they get an error message
"You invoked configure incorrectly. Try with CC="gcc -m32" instead."

Bruno