M4 problems

[Richard Earnshaw]

> 
> 
>   In message < Pine.LNX.3.96.980404201041.2213A-100000@bartlet.df.lth.se >you wri
> te:
>   > Are there any good reason we define M4 in the egcs/Makefile?
> Yes.  It's part of the one tree build system.
> 
> If you take the m4 sources and put them in the source tree with egcs,
> then egcs will automatically build and use the m4 binaries that you
> just built instead of whatever is lying around on the system.
> 

The problem is not what happens when you have the m4 sources in your build 
tree.  It's what happens when you don't.  If you don't have the source 
then configure *assumes* that your gnu m4 is installed as 'm4' (if it 
isn't then things break).

I don't particularly want to have to have m4 in my egcs build tree (it's 
big enough already); but equally, I'm not keen on having gnu m4 installed 
as anything other than gm4 (I can't have an environment where standard 
utilities are being replaced by others -- not all my work is gnu based and 
it could result in problems in the field which I'm not aware of).

The obvious solution for this would be for the toplevel configure to 
detect (a la autoconf) where the installed version of gnu m4 is (it can 
find a gnu m4 that is installed as gm4), and to use that.

Why is this not done?

Richard.