Subject: bug#12877: Autoconf, GNU m4 and POSIXLY_CORRECT

From: Eric Blake <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 14 Nov 2012 06:20:57 -0700

[adding bug-m4]

On 11/14/2012 04:09 AM, Sebastian Freundt wrote:
>>> (GNU) m4 when being called with the variable POSIXLY_CORRECT behaves
>>> differently as all GNU extensions will be suppressed.
>>>
>> Modern autoconf versions used with modern GNU m4 versions should pass
>> the latter the '-g' option, so that the POSIXLY_CORRECT variable does
>> not have any effect on the behaviour of GNU m4.  Which versions of
>> autoconf and m4 are you using?
>>

> freundt@clyde:pts/30:~> m4 --version
> m4 (GNU M4) 1.9a.574-8613

Alas, there's your problem.  You self-built from m4.git, but built from
the master (experimental) branch instead of branch-1.4 (stable
releases); unfortunately, the experimental branch is just that, and
doesn't yet play nicely with autoconf.

I should probably find a way to reject any m4 version at autoconf's
configure time if it doesn't support GNU extensions; meanwhile, I should
also find time to fix m4.git to make the experimental branch not regress
in relation to released m4.

-- 
Eric Blake   [email-masked]    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org