Two versions of m4

[Giorgos Keramidas]

On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 23:46:07 -0500 (CDT), Lars Eighner <luvbeastie at larseighner.com> wrote:
>On Wed, 28 Oct 2009, Giorgos Keramidas wrote:
>>On Tue, 27 Oct 2009 20:24:38 -0500 (CDT), Lars Eighner <luvbeastie at larseighner.com> wrote:
>>> Evidently by making it necessary to learn yet another scripting
>>> language to configure it.  Other than personal profit I cannot see
>>> why people are clinging like grim death to something this fubar.
>>> Really, let's go past this one more time:
>>>
>>> "Sure, sendmail.cf is hard to work with so the solution is you learn
>>> m4!"
>>>
>>> Did you look at the link he offered?  How helpful is that?
>>>
>>> Beside which, m4 is a PORT.  So if sendmail is not configurable
>>> without a port, why isn't it a port?
>>
>> Can we go back to our regular hacking, please?  m4 is not a port:
>>
>>  $ which m4
>>  /usr/bin/m4
>
> Evidently my package database is corrupt in some way, because it shows
> m4 as an installed port.  I wonder how that happened, how to fix it,
> and if it will bite if I leave it alone.

Some ports need the GNU version of `m4'.  So they install a second copy
of m4 in `/usr/local'.  You should be able to see the ports that depend
on GNU m4 with pkg_info.  On my system this shows:

: $ pkg_info -R m4\*
: Information for m4-1.4.13,1:
:
: Required by:
: automake-1.5_5,1
: automake-1.6.3_1
: automake-1.9.6_3
: bison-2.4.1,1
: autoconf-2.62
: automake-1.10.1