configure script can delete /dev/null

[lasgouttes]

[This bug is already fixed, but I enter it for the benefit of
people searching bugzilla]

There is a very nasty bug in LyX 1.2.2 configure script: if you
configure as root and an error occurs during the configure step
(e.g. xforms not found), the the script will delete the /dev/null
device. This undoubtly leads to very bad effect, since /dev/null is a
very basic device in any unix system.

If you have been victim of this problem, please complain here and I'll
try to find out how to reconstruct it (some magic command that I do
not know yet).

LyX version 1.2.3 and 1.3.0cvs as of Jan 8, 2003 are not affected
by the bug.

A bit of background: there has been for a long time some code in
LyX configure script that removed the config.cache file (that keep
tracks of tests results) when an error has occured. This allows to
re-run the script once you have made correction without seeing the old
results. However, starting with autoconf 2.5x, the cache file now
defaults to /dev/null (i.e. no cache). Since LyX 1.2.2 was the first
version distributed with an autoconf script generated with autoconf
2.52, this triggered this awful behaviour.

Sorry for the problems that this may cause to your systems...

[lasgouttes]

Close the bug

[levon]

mass verify. grep -v ApplesWin