Hello, * Bruno Haible wrote on Sun, Dec 05, 2010 at 02:12:49AM CET: > > If the particular > > combination of failures matches 63, 77, or 99 (as commonly used by > > automake and autoconf to mean version mismatch, skip, or hard fail), > > then the configure script might misbehave. > > In the generated configure scripts, AC_RUN_IFELSE tests for an exit > code equal to 0 and nothing else. And this cannot change, because it's > documented behaviour of AC_RUN_IFELSE: > > -- Macro: AC_RUN_IFELSE (INPUT, [ACTION-IF-TRUE], [ACTION-IF-FALSE], > [ACTION-IF-CROSS-COMPILING]) > If PROGRAM compiles and links successfully and returns an exit > status of 0 when executed, run shell commands ACTION-IF-TRUE. > Otherwise, run shell commands ACTION-IF-FALSE. > > So, there is no problem now, and there cannot be a problem in the > future.
Well, I think what Eric was hinting at was that, for example, some tests in Autoconf's and Automake's own test suites interpret an exit status of 77 from a configure execution within that test run to infer that the test should be skipped. I don't think that the current gnulib testsuite invokes configure programs from within, and I don't think Autoconf's nor Automake's test suites currently use gnulib macros, but it wouldn't be a big leap to think that some gnulib-using packages interpreted an exit from configure with status 77 to infer some hint about skipping. IMVHO a NEWS entry should be good enough to warn about this possible semantic change, however. Cheers, Ralf
