[ adding bug-autoconf; this is http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.sysutils.automake.patches/2774 ]
Hello Benoit, all, Thanks for the report. * Benoit Sigoure wrote on Sat, Jun 16, 2007 at 08:47:54AM CEST: > > when running HEAD's make check, I get a failure: > > + aclocal-1.10a -Werror > configure.in:4: error: AC_SUBST: `$1' is not a valid shell variable name > configure.in:4: the top level > autom4te: /opt/local/bin/gm4 failed with exit status: 1 > aclocal: autom4te failed with exit status: 1 > + exit 1 > FAIL: subst.test > > autoconf/lib/autoconf/general.m4:2042 reads: > m4_define([AC_SUBST], > [m4_bmatch(m4_bpatsubst([[$1]], [@&[EMAIL PROTECTED]), > ^m4_defn([m4_re_word])$, [], > [AC_FATAL([$0: `$1' is not a valid shell variable name])])dnl [...] > (They are all from yesterday's CVS HEAD excepted GNU M4) Hmm. automake/tests/subst.test is from 1996 and has seen trivial changes in 2001 and 2002, and has this comment: # Test that AC_SUBST($1) does something sensible. From Ulrich # Drepper. It is broken by this recent (and very sensible) patch against Autoconf: | 2007-06-12 Noah Misch <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | | * lib/autoconf/general.m4 (AC_SUBST): Raise a fatal error if VARIABLE is | not a valid shell variable name. | * tests/mktests.sh (ac_exclude_list): Add AC_ARG_VAR. | * tests/torture.at (AC_SUBST: variable name validation): New test. | Reported by Andreas Schwab. > Maybe this test ought to be removed from Automake? I'm a bit afraid the Autoconf change, good as it looks to me, may just happen to break some obscure macro code somewhere -- after all, there is a reason that a test exists. Searching around in the glibc CVS repository lead me nowhere conclusive though. FWIW, the Automake change that installed the test has this rather innocent ChangeLog entry: | Tue Dec 10 00:41:17 1996 Tom Tromey <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> | | * automake.in (AC_SUBST_PATTERN): Check for alphanumeric variable | names only. Test subst.test. I think mailing lists or similar trails were not used back then, but I did not search for any particular now. Suggestions? Cheers, Ralf
