Bug 69354

Summary: AC_PATH_PROG doesn't work when PATH isn't expanded yet
Product: [Retired] Red Hat Linux Reporter: Akira TAGOH <tagoh>
Component: autoconfAssignee: Jens Petersen <petersen>
Status: CLOSED RAWHIDE QA Contact: Brian Brock <bbrock>
Severity: medium Docs Contact:
Priority: medium    
Version: 8.0CC: jorton, rh-bugzilla
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Hardware: i386   
OS: Linux   
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Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
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Last Closed: 2002-11-22 14:54:45 UTC Type: ---
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oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
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Description Flags
configure.in none

Description Akira TAGOH 2002-07-22 09:37:51 UTC
From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 Galeon/1.2.5 (X11; Linux i686; U;) Gecko/20020610
Debian/1.2.5-1

Description of problem:
When $PATH isn't expanded, autoconf generates as the following:
  as_save_IFS=$IFS; IFS=$PATH_SEPARATOR 
for as_dir in $PATH:/usr/lib:/usr/sbin  
do 
  IFS=$as_save_IFS 
  test -z "$as_dir" && as_dir=. 
  for ac_exec_ext in '' $ac_executable_extensions; do 
  if $as_executable_p "$as_dir/$ac_word$ac_exec_ext"; then 
    ac_cv_path_SENDMAIL="$as_dir/$ac_word$ac_exec_ext" 
    echo "$as_me:$LINENO: found 
$as_dir/$ac_word$ac_exec_ext" >&5 
    break 2 
  fi 
done 
done 

but bash's man page is described about IFS:
       IFS    The  Internal Field Separator that is used for word
              splitting after expansion and to split  lines  into
              words  with  the read builtin command.  The default
              value is ``<space><tab><newline>''.

So IFS doesn't work for 'for'. I think AC_PATH_PROG's 4th argument always needs
to be set as the variable. I mean the above script needs  to be generated as the
following:
ac_dummy="$PATH:/usr/lib:/usr/sbin"
for as_dir in $ac_dummy

or

for as_dir in $($PATH:/usr/lib:/usr/sbin)


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):


How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1.runs autoconf with attached configure.in
2.runs configure without /usr/sbin in PATH
3.
	

Actual Results:  program doesn't found.

Expected Results:  program should found.

Additional info:

Comment 1 Akira TAGOH 2002-07-22 09:41:29 UTC
Created attachment 66224 [details]
configure.in

Comment 2 Akira TAGOH 2002-07-22 09:46:37 UTC
this problem seems to not appear with autoconf-2.13

Comment 3 Enrico Scholz 2002-07-22 20:40:53 UTC
Using ':' as path separator seems to be wrong. autoconf.info states in 'File
System Conventions':

|    Also, because the colon is used as part of a drivespec, these
| systems don't use it as path separator.  When creating or accessing
| paths, use the `PATH_SEPARATOR' output variable instead.

When using '${PATH_SEPARATOR}' instead of ':' in your example, it works as expected.

Comment 4 Akira TAGOH 2002-07-23 03:21:35 UTC
Huh? the colon isn't used as part of a drivespace on Linux. I think that
description mention an use on DOS.

Comment 5 Enrico Scholz 2002-07-23 08:51:55 UTC
Usually, ./configure scripts are intented for use on general Posix compliant
systems and not on GNU/Linux only. Most of these systems have special quirks
which must be handled by autoconf correctly.

AFAIK, Cygwin tries to provide such a Posix environment, but inherits ':' as
special character in pathnames from its underlying OS.

Comment 6 Joe Orton 2002-11-22 14:54:38 UTC
This is known autoconf bug which is fixed in autoconf 2.54:

""
- AC_PATH_PROG
  Now colon in the optional path arguments are properly handled.
""




Comment 7 Jens Petersen 2002-11-23 00:04:25 UTC
Yes, this looks to be ok in autoconf-2.56-1.