Subject: bug#67539: GNU Automake 1.16.5 FAILS one test objc-megademo

From: Karl Berry <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat, 2 Dec 2023 14:43:00 -0700

However it looks like there is no tag defined for Objective C[1]
    (presumably it would be --tag=OBJC).  Adding this option does appear
    to make things "work" in the sense that libtool just complains about
    the unknown tag but then proceeds to actually do stuff, rather than
    exiting outright with a fatal error.

Thanks Nick.

Does libtool actually work (well enough) with Objective C, then? Apart
from the warning about the tag. I don't see it mentioned in the libtool
sources.

Anyway, I guess it's easy enough to add the tag, if that makes things
better.  Why not, I guess? Patch below look right? (Plus maybe something
in the manual.)

BTW, I've been unable to install objc on my systems (Alma 8, Rocky 9) 
since installing the gcc-objc + libobjc packages does not suffice.
The result is still:
gcc: error: foo.m: Objective-C compiler not installed on this system

I see some ideas about how to proceed on the net, but ... time.

>From the lack of reports about this test failure (yours was the first,
Dennis, as far as I can recall), I surmise that hardly anyone (who cares
about automake anyway) has objc installed. --thanks, karl.

--- a/bin/automake.in
+++ b/bin/automake.in
@@ -739,6 +739,7 @@ register_language ('name' => 'objc',
 		   'compiler' => 'OBJCCOMPILE',
 		   'compile_flag' => '-c',
 		   'output_flag' => '-o',
+		   'libtool_flag' => 'OBJC',
 		   'lder' => 'OBJCLD',
 		   'ld' => '$(OBJC)',
 		   'pure' => 1,
@@ -757,6 +758,7 @@ register_language ('name' => 'objcxx',
 		   'compiler' => 'OBJCXXCOMPILE',
 		   'compile_flag' => '-c',
 		   'output_flag' => '-o',
+		   'libtool_flag' => 'OBJCXX',
 		   'lder' => 'OBJCXXLD',
 		   'ld' => '$(OBJCXX)',
 		   'pure' => 1,