what happened to stdarg.h or varargs.h

[Colin Watson]

On Sat, Aug 03, 2013 at 01:11:18PM -0700, Kevin O'Gorman wrote:
> Okay, I tried apt-file, and got a confusion of things.  Since my
> default compiler is gcc-4.6.3, probably the most relevant are
> gcc-4.6: /usr/lib/gcc/i686-linux-gnu/4.6/include/cross-stdarg.h
> gcc-4.6: /usr/lib/gcc/i686-linux-gnu/4.6/include/stdarg.h
> <<-- I'd guess this is the one
> gcc-4.6-arm-linux-gnueabi: /usr/lib/gcc/arm-linux-gnueabi/4.6/include/stdarg.h
> gcc-4.6-arm-linux-gnueabihf:
> /usr/lib/gcc/arm-linux-gnueabihf/4.6/include/stdarg.h

The exact location doesn't matter, as it's on your compiler's default
include path.

> But this leaves a secondary question: why didn't autotools find it?
> You can duplicate my problem (or not) very quickly by downloading
>    http://www.sourceware.org/autobook/complex-1.0.tar.gz
> which is from the web page for the book on autotools
> 
> Unpack it, cd to the directory and
>   ./bootstrap </dev/null
>   ./configure </dev/null
> 
> and see if configure dies or finishes.  Why I need the </dev/null is
> another mystery, but without them the process hangs forever.

This example package would appear to be extremely out of date.  It
simply doesn't work at all with current Autotools in saucy.  Maybe it
isn't the best example to use!  From inspecting it, it appears to have
been written for Autoconf 2.13, which is prehistoric.

I have no such problem with the process hanging, either on precise or
saucy.  You might want to "strace -f" it to see which subprocess is
responsible; perhaps it's the fault of some locally-installed program.

The configure script actually finds stdarg.h fine for me when I build it
on precise (where it more or less struggles into life), but it fails
immediately afterwards with a message that *looks* as though it failed
to find stdarg.h.  This appears to be due to an underquoted macro.

I would consign this example to the dustbin of history and find
something better-maintained; it's sufficiently old that the best it will
do nowadays is teach you bad habits.  Perhaps one of those linked in the
"Wednesday, Feb 8th 2006" entry on http://www.sourceware.org/autobook/
would serve.

-- 
Colin Watson                                       [cjwatson at ubuntu.com]