no usable m4 in $path or /usr/5bin

[Randy Eastland]

I'm not trying to be a jerk, but the issue for people who are new to this
stuff is that we don't anticipate these things. As a result, I've spent a
week trying to get GMP installed with no success. It took me a day to learn
that I needed MinGW. Then I got that installed only to hit a dead end. Then
it took another day to figure out that GCC wasn't installed and even more
time to figure out how to do that. And now I need to learn about something
called "m4", which I don't give two craps about other than it seems to be
necessary to get GMP working. I fully expect that once I get m4 working
there will be yet another road block. Frankly, had I known this process
would be so time consuming, I never would have started it.

You guys do a great job, but as a suggestion maybe there could be something
like a "GMP for Dummies" page that give some very high level concepts to
speed up these things that you probably assume are basic knowledge. Just an
idea.

Thanks for your help. I appreciate it.

-----Original Message-----
From: tg at gmplib.org [mailto:tg at gmplib.org] 
Sent: Friday, July 06, 2012 1:33 PM
To: Randy Eastland
Cc: gmp-discuss at gmplib.org
Subject: Re: no usable m4 in $path or /usr/5bin

"Randy Eastland" <randy.eastland at gmail.com> writes:

  Thank you for getting back to me. I don't even know what that means
"Install
  m4". What is m4? 
  
It is a program, specifically a macro processor.

  It seems like every time something doesn't work in the installation of
GMP,
  the answer is to install something else. First I have to install MinGW.
Then
  I have to install gcc. Now I have to install m4? Does this trip down the
  rabbit hole have an end? (sorry for venting)
  
We haven't yet figured out a way of compiling without a compiler, for which
we are really sorry.

--
Torbjörn