Re: Can m4 be built without automake?

[Eric Blake]

On 06/15/2015 12:34 PM, Gang Chen wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm trying to build m4 on my zos-uss system, but run into the error below
> after I run './configure' and started 'make'. It seems that automake is
> required to build m4, while automake requires autoconf and autoconf
> requires m4. Is that a deadlock?
> 
> make  all-recursive
> Making all in .
> CDPATH="${ZSH_VERSION+.}:" && cd . && /bin/sh
> /plex/gordonc/work/m4-1.4.17/build-aux/missing aclocal-1.14 -I m4
> aclocal-1.14: /plex/gordonc/work/m4-1.4.17/build-aux/missing 81: FSUM7351
> not found

This says that the 'missing' script was trying to run a program named
FSUM7351, which doesn't exist.  Based on later transcript lines...

> WARNING: 'aclocal-1.14' is missing on your system.
>          You should only need it if you modified 'acinclude.m4' or
>          'configure.ac' or m4 files included by 'configure.ac'.
>          The 'aclocal' program is part of the GNU Automake package:
>          <http://www.gnu.org/software/automake>
>          It also requires GNU Autoconf, GNU m4 and Perl in order to run:
>          <http://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf>
>          <http://www.gnu.org/software/m4/>
>          <http://www.perl.org/>
> FSUM8226 make: Error code 127

...your particular implementation of 'make' is rather odd, in that it
does not call itself make, but rather 'FSUMxxxx make', and this appears
to be the cause of the confusion that is tripping up the 'missing'
script (that is, I'm guessing that the script tried to invoke $MAKE, and
shell word-splitting turned that into trying to invoke FSUMxxxx with a
first argument of 'make').  The whole point of the 'missing' script is
to work around botched file timestamps that would normally trigger an
autotools rebuild, so that things can be built even without the
autotools already installed; so you may first need to debug why it is
not working for you.  'missing' is maintained by automake, so you may
get more help on that mailing list.  Or you could just go ahead and
install 'GNU make' first, and put it on your path ahead of whatever
unusual system make you are using, so that it no longer prints out the
weird FSUMxxxx prefixes that confuse the rest of the build chain.

-- 
Eric Blake   eblake redhat com    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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