Re: Latest M4 fails M4 checks

[Paul Eggert]

In <https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf/2021-04/msg00001.html> 
on 4/20/21 4:21 AM, Jeffrey Walton wrote:

> Maybe it's time to provide an updated M4. A 6 year old version of M4
> that crashes is useless.

It's long past time for a new GNU m4 to be published. I'm not surprised 
that GNU m4 won't run on the latest macOS, as macOS has changed so much 
recently. Worse, GNU m4 won't build even on the latest GNU/Linux. (That 
is, although the GNU m4 code on Savannah in branch-1.4 will build under 
GNU/Linux, the latest release GNU m4 1.4.18 won't build.)

Today I took the time to port GNU m4 branch-1.4 to macOS 11.2.3, so the 
next GNU m4 release should run on that macOS version. Please try the 
results of my efforts. You can get them from Savannah 
<https://savannah.gnu.org/git/?group=m4> on branch-1.4 and build from 
Git, or you can try the following tarball which I just now generated 
from the latest commit e9a56f3e94454077e68f1eb3d583f745e6cef12e:

https://www.cs.ucla.edu/~eggert/m4-1.4.18.22-dfa46.tar.xz

I just now used this tarball on macOS 11.2.3 (arm64), ran './configure; 
make check' and all tests passed. It'd be helpful to know whether it 
runs on your macOS version too, if it's different from mine.