./configure misdetects SNPRINTF_RETURNS_BOGUS (was: [test failure] t4114 binary file becomes symlink)

From: Jakub Narebski <jnareb@gmail.com>
Date: Jul 19, 2009, 10:33 UTC
Message-ID: <m34ot9c67t.fsf_-_@localhost.localdomain>
In-Reply-To: <20090718211345.GI16708@vidovic>

Nicolas Sebrecht <nicolas.s.dev@gmx.fr> writes:

Show 5 quoted lines

> Hum, 'rm configure ; make configure ; ./configure' give
> 
>  checking whether snprintf() and/or vsnprintf() return bogus value... yes
> 
> WTF?

It looks like some recent bug in configure.ac, as I have run ./configure without "make configure" and it had

  NO_LIBGEN_H=@NO_LIBGEN_H@
  NEEDS_RESOLV=@NEEDS_RESOLV@

  SNPRINTF_RETURNS_BOGUS=

and when I did "rm configure ; make configure ; ./configure" it gave me

  NO_LIBGEN_H=
  NEEDS_RESOLV=

  SNPRINTF_RETURNS_BOGUS=UnfortunatelyYes

I have tried to find which commit introduced this regression.

 $ git bisect start origin v1.6.3 v1.6.3.2 -- configure.ac config.mak.in
 $ git bisect run ~/git/test.sh

finds ecc395c (Makefile: add NEEDS_LIBGEN to optionally add -lgen to compile arguments, 2009-07-10) as a first bad commit. But I don't see how it could have changed it... Strange...

CC-ed Brandon Casey, author of blamed changeset, and David Syzdek who offered at some time help with maintaining autoconf.

P.S. Perhaps it is time for creating MAINTAINERS file for git?

-- >8 -- #!/bin/bash

rm -f configure && make configure && ./configure -q && grep -q "^SNPRINTF_RETURNS_BOGUS=$" config.mak.autogen

# end of test.sh

-- 
Jakub Narebski
Poland
ShadeHawk on #git