Why doesn't autoconf like our /bin/sh?

[Mike Meyer]

On Sun, 9 Mar 2008 17:41:15 -0700 (PDT) Mikko Työläjärvi <mbsd at pacbell.net> wrote:

> On Sun, 9 Mar 2008, Mike Meyer wrote:
> 
> [...]
> 
> > So there are at *least* three things that could be considered broken,
> > in that changing them would fix the problem I encountered.
> >
> > 1) Our /bin/sh isn't classified as Definitely usable.
> > 2) zsh is Not usable.
> > 3) zsh is classified as Maybe usable.
> >
> > #1 could be fixed on our side, if we understood why it wasn't
> > usable. It could also be fixed by the autoconf folks. #2 has to be
> > fixed by the zsh folks. #3 has to be fixed by the autoconf folks.
> 
> Zsh has a large number of configuration settings that can make it
> more or less sh(1)-compatible.  I've been bitten by SH_WORD_SPLIT,
> which defaults to being incompatible, IIRC.
> 
> Since zsh is my interactive shell of preference, I spent a few minutes
> trying to reproduce your problems, but failed.  Perhaps there is
> something in your .z* config files that make things go awry?

Note that to reproduce it, you must *not* have any shells installed
that the configure script classifies as "definitely usable". In
particular, if you've got bash installed (and a number of ports will
install it for you), the configure script finds that and will use
it. Also, doing things through ports causes SHELL to be set to /bin/sh
(normally, anway), and hence masks the problem.

There seem to be a fwe things in my environment specific to zsh -
other than all the completion stuff, of course, which shouldn't make
any difference - MULTIOS, zsh, FPATH and extendedglob. Turning them
all off doesn't make any difference.

    Thanks,
    <mike
-- 
Mike Meyer <mwm at mired.org>		http://www.mired.org/consulting.html
Independent Network/Unix/Perforce consultant, email for more information.