Bizarre test for main in libm

[Richard Earnshaw]

> On Thu, May 01, 2003 at 04:01:53PM -0500, Loren James Rittle wrote:
> > In article <200305011038.h41AcJm15772@pc960.cambridge.arm.com> you write:
> > >
> > > Does anyone know why that test is there in the first place?
> > 
> > Mark, mentioned that the patch was sort-a-ugly.  Are there any systems
> > where there is no -lm?  The above test would not link if -lm was not
> > found.  Correct?
> 
> Right.  It might just be a semi-convenient way of getting -lm added to
> LIBS if-and-only-if libm is available.  The theory, I think, is that if
> libm is available at all, it's probably also required (for us).
> 

Ah.  I get it.  I would have said this was non-obvious enough to warrant a 
comment, but then I'm not an autoconf expert.  It somewhat surprised me to 
see

	checking for main in -lm ... yes

scroll past on the screen (yes, they go slowly enough to read on one 
machine I use).

R.