Subject: rev 8 - trunk

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 9 Aug 2002 18:56:27 -0500

Author: kfogel
Date: Fri, 09 Aug 2002 18:56:23 -0500
New Revision: 8

Modified:
   trunk/configure.in
Log:
* configure.in: Don't use "AC_PREFIX_PROGRAM(emacs)" to discover a
  prefix.

Autoconf 2.52 was finding /usr/local/bin/emacs and setting prefix to
"/usr/local/bin", instead of "/usr/local".  This caused ale to be
installed in /usr/local/bin/bin, which is bad enough, but then the
height of hilarity was reached when 'make install' tried to make
/usr/local/bin/info be a directory.

This bug is fixed in Autoconf 2.53:

        2001-09-18  Paul Wagland   <[email-masked]>

	* lib/autoconf/general.m4: Fixed AC_PREFIX_PROGRAM, it now
        behaves as the documentation claims it should (and how it
        behaved in 2.13).

I tested the fix, it does work.  However, many people do not yet have
Autoconf 2.53 installed, and I have heard complaints from various
developers that installing Autoconf 2.53 can break pre-2.53 projects,
including Subversion (thus I didn't dare install it myself, and don't
even *ask* about the symlink hell needed to get 2.53 to run without
being installed in a standard place).

In any case, we can just use the default "/usr/local" prefix for now.
When new Autoconfs are prevalent, we can put it back.

Interestingly enough, a Google search for AC_PROGRAM_PREFIX turned up
exactly two links.  (Strange... you'd expect more, wouldn't you?)
Both are email messages from Dan Karron on 15 Jan 1995.  The first
message describes how he encountered this exact bug.  The second
message goes into more detail, and includes some more analysis.  Here
they are; the top message was written before the bottom, archive IDs
notwithstanding:

   http://www.geocrawler.com/archives/3/379/1995/1/100/2084572/
   http://www.geocrawler.com/archives/3/379/1995/1/100/2084570/

(I guess the autoconf ChangeLogs just aren't on the web anywere.)

So apparently this got broken in Autoconf somewhat before Ale 0.1.183,
but we never upgraded our Autoconfs in time to detect it.

Modified: trunk/configure.in
==============================================================================
--- trunk/configure.in	(original)
+++ trunk/configure.in	Fri Aug  9 18:56:26 2002
@@ -1,6 +1,5 @@
 dnl Process this file with autoconf to produce a configure script.
 AC_INIT(ale.in)
-AC_PREFIX_PROGRAM(emacs)
 
 dnl  Find acc on G. B. Reilly's system.
 AC_CHECK_PROG(CC, acc, acc)