xml-i18n-tools

[Darin Adler]

on 9/18/01 11:16 PM, Josh Sled at jsled@asynchronous.org wrote:

> The easy fix [verified] is to remove the newline-escape in those lines in
> xml-i18n-tools.m4 ... the Right fix is probably to fix whatever generates
> config.status to do better .sed-file chunking.

The bug you are describing is a known problem. It's in our bug list as
<http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=60521>.

As you can see in the bug report, the autoconf maintainer has already
weighed in and said, "newlines are not compatible with sed" :-)

The traditional workaround has been to move the AC_PROG_XML_I18N_TOOLS
invocation closer to the top of configure.in. But sadly, as more macros are
added to new versions of xml-i18n-tools and new releases of autoconf split
the sed script into smaller and smaller sizes, it has to be closer and
closer to the top for the workaround to be effective.

Maciej has told me in the past that removing the newline-escape in those
lines results in an expansion that doesn't actually make working make rules.
You said that you have verified that the fix works -- maybe we're lucky and
Maciej was mistaken, or maybe you just didn't test any case where the make
rule had to work.

Maciej also told me that he has an idea in mind for a real fix that will
avoid this problem and be guaranteed to work properly.

Wait a second, why didn't I ever think of this before? Can't we just use a
semicolon instead of a newline to separate the prerequisites from the
command!? Maciej?

    -- Darin