help building autoconf

[d***@gmail.com]

Hi,

I am trying to build autoconf 2.69, needed for another package.
Configure works OK. In the make stage I get an error:

autom4te_perllibdir='..'/lib AUTOM4TE_CFG='../lib/autom4te.cfg'
../bin/autom4te -B '..'/lib -B '..'/lib --language M4sh --cache ''
--melt ./autoconf.as -o autoconf.in
autom4te: need GNU m4 1.4 or later:
/global/homes/d/dmitryp/m4-1.4.16/install/bin

I have actually built M4 version 1.4.16 and defined environment variable M4
as the location. Surprised that autom4te cannot find it, or cannot
seem to know that it is version 1.4.
Typing autom4te --version gives the following:
autom4te: need GNU m4 1.4 or later:
/global/homes/d/dmitryp/m4-1.4.16/install/bin

I am at a loss. Would appreciate some help on this.
Thanks very much,

D.P.

[Eric Blake]

Post by d***@gmail.com
Hi,
I am trying to build autoconf 2.69, needed for another package.
autom4te_perllibdir='..'/lib AUTOM4TE_CFG='../lib/autom4te.cfg'
../bin/autom4te -B '..'/lib -B '..'/lib --language M4sh --cache ''
--melt ./autoconf.as -o autoconf.in
/global/homes/d/dmitryp/m4-1.4.16/install/bin
I have actually built M4 version 1.4.16 and defined environment variable M4
as the location. Surprised that autom4te cannot find it, or cannot
seem to know that it is version 1.4.
/global/homes/d/dmitryp/m4-1.4.16/install/bin

I'm guessing you installed your just-built m4 as
/global/homes/d/dmitryp/m4-1.4.16/install/bin/m4? Are you exporting $M4
in your current environment, or just when you ran configure? What does
'm4 --version' and '$M4 --version' say? It looks like it is just a case
of you not completely setting up your environment, but I'm not quite
sure with the information you've presented here where you are going wrong.

[Eric Blake]

[adding the list, so others can learn from this...]

You were right. I was defining the environment variable as the path to M4.
After I changed it to point to the executable itself, everything worked.
Thanks very much.

Is there any particular piece of documentation we should improve to make
it more obvious that $M4 must point to the binary, rather than the
directory containing the binary?

Post by d***@gmail.com
/global/homes/d/dmitryp/m4-1.4.16/install/bin

Hmm, this message is quoting the name of the "binary" it tried to
execute (and executing a directory doesn't do much), but it might be
more helpful if it added a blurb about EISDIR; I wonder if it's worth
trying a patch along those lines.