mainautogen - Support: sr #111041, Dependency on non-portable and...

 
 

sr #111041: Dependency on non-portable and unreliable "which" command

Submitter:  Eli Schwartz <eschwartz>
Submitted:  Wed 27 Mar 2024 03:21:33 AM UTC
   
 
Category:  None Priority:  5 - Normal
Severity:  3 - Normal Status:  None
Privacy:  Public Assigned to:  None
Open/Closed:  Open Operating System:  None
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Wed 27 Mar 2024 03:21:33 AM UTC, original submission:  

I noticed this when trying to build sharutils, which has libopts.m4 that ultimately comes from autogen.

  • QA Notice: command not found:
  • ./configure: 1: which: not found
  • ./configure: 1: which: not found




The code looks like this:

  [while :
  do
      test -x "$POSIX_SHELL" && break
      POSIX_SHELL=`which bash`
      test -x "$POSIX_SHELL" && break
      POSIX_SHELL=`which dash`
      test -x "$POSIX_SHELL" && break
      POSIX_SHELL=/usr/xpg4/bin/sh
      test -x "$POSIX_SHELL" && break
      POSIX_SHELL=`/bin/sh -c '
          exec 2>/dev/null
          if ! true ; then exit 1 ; fi
          echo /bin/sh'`
      test -x "$POSIX_SHELL" && break
      ]AC_MSG_ERROR([cannot locate a working POSIX shell])[
  done]
  AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED([POSIX_SHELL], ["${POSIX_SHELL}"],
           [define to a working POSIX compliant shell])



Unfortunately, the use of "which bash" to check whether a bash program exists fails when the "which" command doesn't exist. See e.g.

https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/85249/why-not-use-which-what-to-use-then/85250#85250
https://mywiki.wooledge.org/BashFAQ/081

In general, you can and should use "command -v" for this. It was part of POSIX 2008. A simple "s/which/command -v/" suffices.

However since this is a macro collection for autoconf it seems more apropos to use AC_CHECK_PROG or AC_CHECK_PROGS instead...

Eli Schwartz <eschwartz>

 

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