RFR: 8031669: (xs) Allow override of "simple required tools" in basics.m4

[Erik Joelsson]

On 2014-01-14 20:59, Mike Duigou wrote:
> On Jan 14 2014, at 10:35 , Mike Duigou <mike.duigou at oracle.com> wrote:
>
> I discovered the problem.
>
> CAT=foo sh configure
>
> will result in
>
> CAT=/usr/bin/cat
>
> (the default) whereas
>
> CAT=/usr/bin/foo sh configure
>
> will result in
>
> CAT=/usr/bin/foo
>
> (overridden) The value for CAT has to be an absolute path and not merely the name of something on the path. I'm now using
>
> CAT=`which foo`
>
> (overridden to /usr/bin/foo) and that seems to work fine.
>
> Mike
>
Ah, that makes sense, but it's also annoying. I would expect CAT=foo to 
work if I didn't know better. It's good to know of the workaround though.

Would it make sense to enable CAT=foo to work for (almost) all tools by 
changing BASIC_REQUIRE_PROG to the following?

AC_DEFUN([BASIC_REQUIRE_PROG],
  [
    AC_PATH_PROG($1, [$1 $2])
    BASIC_CHECK_NONEMPTY($1, $2)
  ])

/Erik