GNU package mutually dependent

Question

I want to install autoconf in a HP-UX server, I downloaded autoconf-2.58 and ran configure and got the following:

So I downloaded m4-1.4 and tried to install it. configure is okay, but running make I got:

So m4-1.4 requires autoconf be installed ? But autoconf needs m4-1.4 at the same time.

What should I do ?

Answer 1

The error in your screen shot, shows m4 has been installed (found at /bin/m4), but didn't support frozen files.

But from http://sunfreeware.saix.net/indexsparc10.html (for Solaris), i didn't see the dependencies list in autoconf which need m4. Normally it should be same in HP_UX.

autoconf-2.68-sol10-sparc-local.gz GNU autoconf is a package for generating configure scripts - installs in /usr/local.

m4-1.4.16-sol10-sparc-local.gz GNU `m4' is an implementation of the traditional Unix macro processor - installs in /usr/local. Dependencies: libsigsegv and to obtain libgcc_so.so.1, you will need to install either libgcc-3.4.6 or gcc-3.4.6 or later.

First, What you can check is, if gcc or libgcc has been installed and set properly or not.

Second, check if m4 is in the PATH, such as /usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/bin or not. if it is find in /bin/m4, can you show the version /bin/m4 --version.

Answer 2

I think your configure step actually failed to configure M4. The No suffix list. message is what makes me suspect that. I downloaded GNU M4 1.4 (dated Nov 1994) configured on linux. The only make target that I saw that needed autoconf was the configure target.

You might have better success with a more recent GNU M4/autoconf releases.