Re: GNU M4 1.4.8b released (beta release)

[Matthew Woehlke]

Eric Blake wrote:
> According to Matthew Woehlke on 3/8/2007 10:59 AM:
> > Matthew Woehlke wrote:
> > > Well, it seems to have gotten past lib/ anyway. Will report back with
> > > how the test suite goes...
> > Ok, 'make check results'... I got this:
> >
> > Checking ./012.macro_argu
> > @ ../doc/m4.texinfo:1358: Origin of test
> > ./012.macro_argu: status was 255, expected 1
>
> Does your platform #define EXIT_FAILURE to 255 in <stdlib.h>?

Not 255, but...

/usr/include/stdlib.h:62:#define EXIT_FAILURE    -1

...which has the same effect AFAIK (and certainly looks like the 
culprit, now that you pointed it out).

> If so, what exit status does /bin/false give?

$ /bin/false ; echo $?
1
$ false ; echo $?
1

("false", a.k.a. /usr/local/bin/false, is from coreutils 5.97. I thought 
I'd mention it also.)

> Should gnulib override EXIT_FAILURE to
> be 1 for consistency, or honor weird platforms that choose some other
> value (as is their right, according to POSIX) in which case I should teach
> the M4 testsuite to allow the system's notion of EXIT_FAILURE?  One of the
> problems with setting EXIT_FAILURE to 255 is that it interferes with the
> POSIX rules for how xargs behaves, if that is an argument for replacing
> your unusual value with the more typical 1.

I've no particular opinion. Since 'false' clearly uses '1', I don't see 
a problem using '1' (AFAIK '1' doesn't mean success like on - IIRC - 
VMS). Anyway I guess this doesn't need to be fixed immediately. 
Essentially we've determined that the "failures" are false positives, 
therefore 'make check' in fact passed. :-)

> > 84-89 were skipped ("no changeword support")
>
> You have to configure with --enable-changeword if you want this feature;
> partly because it is obsolete and will not be supported in the eventual M4
> 2.0.

Ok, I wasn't worried, I just wanted to mention it for completeness' 
sake. Thanks.

--
Matthew
You are in a meadow. A huge red dragon stands before you.
> FIGHT DRAGON
With what? You don't have any weapons.
> RUN AWAY
You wisely exercise the better part of valor.