[MacPorts] #49713: autoconf: generated configure scripts should not try to use nawk

[MacPorts]

#49713: autoconf: generated configure scripts should not try to use nawk
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 Reporter:  ryandesign@…  |      Owner:  larryv@…
     Type:  enhancement   |     Status:  new
 Priority:  Normal        |  Milestone:
Component:  ports         |    Version:  2.3.99
 Keywords:  haspatch      |       Port:  autoconf
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 autoconf generates configure scripts that, among other things, try to
 determine which awk implementation to use. It tries, in order, gawk, mawk,
 nawk and awk, and uses the first one that's found.

 gawk works well. I've never tried mawk but also never heard of any
 problems with it. But users who install nawk but do not have gawk
 installed have experienced numerous build failures of various ports. There
 are many prior tickets. In the past, I've fixed this by using the
 conflicts_build portgroup to add a build conflict with nawk. This is
 inconvenient for the user who actually wants to use nawk for their own
 work, because it requires them to deactivate nawk prior to building the
 port they requested and to reactivate it later. Lately, Josh has been
 fixing the problem a different way: by patching configure scripts to no
 longer try to use nawk. I've changed several ports today to use that
 method, but ran into a problem fixing graphviz, because graphviz uses
 autoreconf to regenerate its configure script, so even though I've patched
 it to not use nawk, it gets regenerated at configure time and then again
 will use nawk.

 Although not all ports fail to build when nawk is installed (for example,
 autoconf itself doesn't), enough do that I would like a more central
 solution for this issue. As a first step, I propose that the autoconf port
 be modified so that the configure scripts it generates no longer attempt
 to use nawk. I'm not aware of any benefit of trying to use nawk, and as I
 said I'm aware of many drawbacks. There are probably countless ports that
 fail to build with nawk that have not been reported; for example, I just
 fixed this problem in gdal today. By fixing the problem centrally in
 autoconf, we fix the problem for all ports using autoconf, and fixing
 other ports could become as easy as just having them run autoreconf (or,
 of course, manually writing a patchfile).

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Ticket URL: <https://trac.macports.org/ticket/49713>
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