Problem with readline's configure script?

[Ron McCall <ronald dot mccall at snet dot net>]

Hi,

I was trying to build GDB 6.0 on Solaris 9 and ran into some errors
while configuring in gdb.  For example:

./configure: $gcc: not found

I tracked the problem down to readline's configure script.  After
configuring in mmalloc, lines in config.cache look like this:

ac_cv_prog_CC=${ac_cv_prog_CC='gcc'}
ac_cv_prog_CPP=${ac_cv_prog_CPP='gcc -E'}

After configuring in readline, lines in config.cache look like this:

ac_cv_prog_CC=${ac_cv_prog_CC=gcc}
ac_cv_prog_CPP=${ac_cv_prog_CPP=$'gcc -E'}

Then, after configuring in sim, lines in config.cache look like this:

ac_cv_prog_CC=${ac_cv_prog_CC='gcc'}
ac_cv_prog_CPP=${ac_cv_prog_CPP='$gcc -E'}

Several other lines besides CPP are affected in this way at this point.
It seems that readline's different quoting scheme confuses the other
configure scripts.

I dumped the environment in readline's configure script immediately
prior to it updating config.cache and found that:

CPP=$'gcc -E'

I did the same thing in mmalloc's configure script and found that:

CPP=gcc -E

So, it seems that the new quoting scheme switch happens earlier in
readline's configure script than where it updates config.cache.  I
started trying to trace the processing of config.cache after it is read
in but got lost pretty quickly.  Does anyone else happen to know where
the problem might be and how to fix it?  In case it matters, I used the
following top-level configure options:

./configure --disable-nls --with-gnu-ld

Please let me know if you need any more information.

Thanks!

Ron McCall