[tex-live] time to compile

[Nelson H. F. Beebe]

Gerben Wierda <Sherlock@rna.nl> writes on Tue, 28 Jan 2003 23:25:14 +0100:

>> When configuring I got:
>>
>> > /bin/sh: ./configure: /bin/sh: bad interpreter: Permission denied
>>
>> which is understandable as the first line of the main configure script 
>> is:
>> > #! /bin/sh
>>
>> with whitspace between #! and /bin/sh

That is perfectly okay, and standardly accepted, and recommended,
practice in Unix shell scripts.  It is more likely that the script
itself lacked execute permission.

Here is what the GNU autoconf documentation says about that space:

>> ...
>> Also, include a space after the exclamation point in interpreter
>> specifications, like this:
>> 
>>      #! /usr/bin/perl
>> 
>> If you omit the space before the path, then 4.2BSD based systems (such
>> as DYNIX) will ignore the line, because they interpret `#! /' as a
>> 4-byte magic number.  Some old systems have quite small limits on the
>> length of the `#!' line too, for instance 32 bytes (not including the
>> newline) on SunOS 4.
>> ...

On the limit of the path, here is what I've recorded for a book I'm
working on:

----------------------------------------------------------------
Vendor platform         O/S version               Maximum length
----------------------------------------------------------------
Apple PowerMac          Darwin 6.2 (MacOS 10.2.2)       256
Compaq/DEC Alpha        OSF/1 4.0                       278
Compaq/DEC/HP Alpha     OSF/1 5.1                       279
GNU/Linux (all arch)    Red Hat 6, 7                    128
HP PA RISC              HP UX 10.20                     127
IBM RS/6000             AIX 4.2                         255
Intel x86               FreeBSD 4.4                     64
SGI MIPS                IRIX 6.5                        255
Sun SPARC               Solaris 2.7, 2.8                131
----------------------------------------------------------------

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- Nelson H. F. Beebe                    Tel: +1 801 581 5254                  -
- Center for Scientific Computing       FAX: +1 801 581 4148                  -
- University of Utah                    Internet e-mail: beebe@math.utah.edu  -
- Department of Mathematics, 110 LCB        beebe@acm.org  beebe@computer.org -
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