GNU m4 1.4

GNU m4 is an implementation of the traditional Unix macro processor. It is mostly SVR4 compatible although it has some extensions (for example, handling more than 9 positional parameters to macros). GNU m4 also has built-in functions for including files, running shell commands, doing arithmetic, etc.

GNU m4 is a macro processor in the sense that it copies its input to the output expanding macros as it goes. Macros are either builtin or user-defined and can take any number of arguments. Besides just doing macro expansion m4 has builtin functions for including named files, running UNIX commands, doing integer arithmetic, manipulating text in various ways, recursion etc... m4 can be used either as a front-end to a compiler or as a macro processor in its own right.

Use it at your own risk, because we cannot take responsibility for crashes, dumps or even worse: loosing data.

Martin Borgman writes:

"With the new version of GNV, ./configure scripts do a much better job. With GNU m4 I only ran into i few problems wen actually building m4 with the generated Makefile. And most of these problems are just programatic stupidities in the source files.

For a quick fix, I added #include <strings.h> to config.h. I commented out the redefinition of strerror() in lib/error.c and I added #include <stdlib.h> to lib/obstack.h. This fixed all the compilation warnings.

The GNV ar wrapper gave we a warning that it didn't understand one of the parameters (cru) but did create a library.

The linker gave me some more warnings about duplicate definitions of getopt, optarg, optopt, optind and opterr. Many GNU sources include enhanced versions of these standard functions. Normally you can get rid of these problems by using the DECC compiler option /PREFIX_LIBRARY_ENTRIES=(ALL_ENTRIES,EXEPT=(getopt,optarg,optopt,optind,opterr)), but I have no idea how to do this using the gcc wrapper.

And last but not least, you need to link something like vms_crtl_init with the executable, but that's no real problem.

To get around my /PREFIX_LIBRARY_ENTRIES problem I did a make -n to see what make would have done and made a dcl script to do the same. See below:

$ set noverify
$! Makefile for VMS
$! DCL-Shell-language. Edit the symbols section at the end.
$!
$! The following three symbols can be used to customize the build
$!
$!      XDEFFLAGS -- is added to the /define
$!      XOBJECTS  -- is added to the object port of link
$!      XLIBS     -- is added to the libs part of link
$!      XINCLUDES -- is added to the /include
$!
$ cc := cc/prefix=(all,except=(getopt,optarg,optopt,optind,opterr))
$! cc := 'cc'/include=('XINCLUDES')
$ cc := 'cc'/define=(_XOPEN_SOURCE_EXTENDED,HAVE_CONFIG_H,_POSIX_EXIT 'XDEFFLAGS')
$ cc := 'cc'/warn=(noinfo,disabl=(notconstqual))
$! cc := 'cc'/list/show=(include,source)
$ if p1 .eqs. "DEBUG"
$ then
$   write sys$output "Adding /noopt/debug to CC command"
$   cc := 'cc'/noopt/debug
$   write sys$output "Adding /debug to LINK command"
$   link := link/debug
$ endif
$!
$ On Control_Y Then Goto The_Exit
$ On Error Then Goto The_Exit
$ set verify
$ set def [.lib]
$ cc /include=([-],[]) regex.c
$ cc /include=([-],[]) getopt.c
$ cc /include=([-],[]) getopt1.c
$ cc /include=([-],[]) error.c
$ cc /include=([-],[]) obstack.c
$ cc /include=([-],[]) xmalloc.c
$ cc /include=([-],[]) xstrdup.c
$ lib/create/object libm4 regex, getopt, getopt1, error, obstack, xmalloc, xstrdup  
$ set def [-]
$ set def [.src]
$ cc /include=([-],[],[-.lib]) m4.c
$ cc /include=([-],[],[-.lib]) builtin.c
$ cc /include=([-],[],[-.lib]) debug.c
$ cc /include=([-],[],[-.lib]) eval.c
$ cc /include=([-],[],[-.lib]) format.c
$ cc /include=([-],[],[-.lib]) freeze.c
$ cc /include=([-],[],[-.lib]) input.c
$ cc /include=([-],[],[-.lib]) macro.c
$ cc /include=([-],[],[-.lib]) output.c
$ cc /include=([-],[],[-.lib]) path.c
$ cc /include=([-],[],[-.lib]) symtab.c
$ Link /exec=m4.exe m4.obj,builtin.obj,debug.obj,eval.obj, -
                     format.obj,freeze.obj,input.obj,macro.obj, -
                     output.obj,path.obj,symtab.obj'XOBJECTS', -
                     [-.lib]libm4.olb/lib,sys$input/opt
SYS$LIBRARY:DECC$SHR/SHARE
$ set def [-]
$ set noverify
$ purge [...]*.lis,*.obj,*.exe
$The_Exit:
$ Save_Status = $STATUS
$ exit Save_Status
		

To link in vms_crtl_init.obj, XOBJECTS should point to it (don't forget the comma in front of the XOBJECTS string).

Regards,

Martin Borgman."

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