which version of GNU m4 does pkgsrc assume? (was: devel/autoconf fails to build on MacOS X)

[Georg Schwarz <georg.schwarz%freenet.de@localhost>]

Am 20.01.2009 um 00:08 schrieb Greg Troxel:

> I wonder if this is really a macos 10.4.1 bug.
>
> You said autoconf and then automake.  I built them both on 10.5.6/i386
> with no trouble.  It has gnu m4 1.4.6

sorry, I meant autoconf only. MacOS 10.4.11 has GNU m4 1.4.2
> So perhaps the fix is to add something in tools that gm4 is broken on
> macos 10.4.

yes, maybe, if it has a more general effect than just on building  
devel/autoconf

> Or, perhaps there is really a bug in autoconf with the wrong number of
> arguments but only the m4 on 10.4 detects this.


conceivable, of course.

http://directory.fsf.org/project/autoconf/ says that in order to  
install autoconf (as of Apr. 10, 2008) GNU m4 1.4.5 or later would be  
required.
The same statement can be found at http://www.gnu.org/software/ 
autoconf/.
So it looks like this is not a Mac OS specific issue at all. It will  
hit any OS that still ships/shipped with an older version of GNU m4  
(looking at the settings in pkgsrc/mk/tools, only Linux and Darwin  
should be affected by default).
How do we deal with that?
Does pkgsrc make any explicit assumption of the minimum version  
number of TOOLS_PLATFORM.gm4? It appears that it assumes 1.4 or later  
only.
Do other packages care?
Should we try to detect the version of TOOLS_PLATFORM.gm4 when  
building devel/autoconf?



--
Georg Schwarz    http://home.pages.de/~schwarz/
georg.schwarz%freenet.de@localhost  +49 151 11559652