It looks like this didn't go through to bug-automake because the bug was still considered to be assigned to autoconf at the time.
---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Zack Weinberg <za...@panix.com> Date: Fri, Sep 4, 2020 at 9:44 AM Subject: Re: bug#14196: Problem with invoking "missing" in directory with "(" in name (Automake 1.11.6, Autoconf 2.68 To: <14...@debbugs.gnu.org>, <cont...@debbugs.gnu.org> reassign -1 automake tags -1 + patch quit OK, after a quick investigation, the failure happens at configure time but the problem code belongs to automake. Specifically, AM_MISSING_HAS_RUN. I think the tidiest fix is to quote the value of $am_aux_dir/missing unconditionally: diff --git a/m4/missing.m4 b/m4/missing.m4 index 6f742fb20..56c84fbf5 100644 --- a/m4/missing.m4 +++ b/m4/missing.m4 @@ -21,12 +21,7 @@ AC_DEFUN([AM_MISSING_HAS_RUN], [AC_REQUIRE([AM_AUX_DIR_EXPAND])dnl AC_REQUIRE_AUX_FILE([missing])dnl if test x"${MISSING+set}" != xset; then - case $am_aux_dir in - *\ * | *\ *) - MISSING="\${SHELL} \"$am_aux_dir/missing\"" ;; - *) - MISSING="\${SHELL} $am_aux_dir/missing" ;; - esac + MISSING="\${SHELL} \"$am_aux_dir/missing\"" ;; fi # Use eval to expand $SHELL if eval "$MISSING --is-lightweight"; then This doesn't handle the possibility of $am_aux_dir containing backslash or double quote characters, but that's ok because AM_SANITY_CHECK will already have refused to run configure with either the current working directory or the source directory named like that. (An alternative patch would be to add ( ) to the set of characters rejected by AM_SANITY_CHECK.) If m4sugar included a version of AS_ESCAPE that worked at configure time, instead of m4 expansion time, I'd suggest using that, but it doesn't. zw