[Nmh-workers] [nmh-1.2] a serious bug in the nmh configure script

[Igor Sobrado]

Hello!

Following the advice of Jon Steinhart I have just subscribed to this
mailing list.  I hope that someone here will help me fixing an issue
when building nmh-1.2 on NetBSD and OpenBSD.  A detailed description
of the challenges compiling this fine mail user agent is provided here:

  http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-users/2005/12/21/0006.html

In short, the configure script has some lines that use what seems the
wrong operator (==).  NetBSD complains when running "./configure",
OpenBSD does not complain.  In any case, the "config.h" file made by
the configure script is wrong in both operating systems.  slocal.c is
unable to find the ndbm.h header file in the right place (/usr/include
in both cases):

  http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-users/2005/12/21/0007.html
  http://mail-index.netbsd.org/netbsd-users/2005/12/21/0009.html

On the first message to netbsd-users@ I submit a patch that does
not work as it should, as slocal.c is looking in the wrong place
for the ndbm.h header file once the configure script has run.
I am accustomed to the

  if [ "X$var" = Xstring ]
  then ...

trick to test possible empty variables, but certainly the syntax
of the autoconf scripts is out of my knowledge.  :-)

Perhaps someone with a better knowledge on the configuration script
used by nmh can provide some feedback on this matter.  I want to
cleanly build nmh on my computer and submit a patch to the NetBSD
Foundation (an updated nmh would be great, but nmh-1.2 has been
released some hours ago) to upgrade nmh from 1.0.4 to 1.2 in the
pkgsrc framework.

At last, I am very sorry for not providing feedback on this issue
before nmh-1.2 was released.  I certainly did not expect nmh-1.2
released too early and the fourth release candidate of nmh-1.1
worked fine, as previous releases did.  By the way, what happened
to nmh-1.1?  ;-)

Best regards,
Igor.