[PPL-devel] PPL uses m4 option --prefix-builtins - Not available on non GNU systems

[Roberto Bagnara]

Tobias Grosser wrote:
> I just compiled ppl on my FreeBSD system. And it works almost flawless.
> Just a little problem during installation.
> 
> You use a GNU specific m4 option not available on non GNU systems like
> *BSD or Solaris.
> 
> The command is:
> 
> m4 --prefix-builtin -I.. -I$(srcdir) -I$(srcdir)/.. \      
> 
> and is used e.g. in interfaces/C/Makefile.
> 
> My fast hack to solve the problem is to install gnu m4 and patch the
> Makefiles to call gm4 instead of m4.
> 
> But it would be nice to be able to install ppl without to be forced to
> install another m4 and to patch the Makefiles.
> 
> There seems to be solutions to get the prefixes without using gnu
> specific stuff:
> 
> http://puszcza.gnu.org.ua/software/mailfromd/manual/html_node/Preprocessor.html#DOCF27
> 
> If this is not possible, it would be nice to get at least a better error
> message and some documentation, that you need gnu m4 to install ppl.

Dear Tobias,

thanks for the report.  We have just committed a modification whereby the
configuration script searches for a suitable version of GNU M4, which is
then used in all makefiles.  Unfortunately, it would be problematic to
support other versions of M4 as we use features (such as m4_indir) that
are not always available elsewhere and (as far as we know) cannot be
emulated.  We have uploaded a snapshot of the next PPL release containing
these changes here:

     ftp://ftp.cs.unipr.it/pub/ppl/snapshots/ppl-0.10.1pre3.tar.bz2

All the best,

      Roberto

-- 
Prof. Roberto Bagnara
Computer Science Group
Department of Mathematics, University of Parma, Italy
http://www.cs.unipr.it/~bagnara/
mailto:bagnara at cs.unipr.it