Georg Schwarz [Mon, Jan 19, 2004 at 01:15:37AM +0100]:
> > In more general cases: if such basic and simple utilities like cat(1) and
> > echo(1) are not compatible on your system, I'd rather consider upgrading
> > them, changing defs.IRIX.mk or /etc/mk.conf . Also, comments in mk/tools.mk
> 
> they are already set there, but these settings are ignored by some Makefiles.

Could you provide examples?

> Unfortunately many configure scripts either try to figure out the location
> of these tools on their own (such as elm-me does) or simply use relative
> paths, assuming that the GNU (or equivalent) ones are (the first) in the
> PATH during configuration time.
> This renders the whole defining process of SED, MAKE, GREP, .. whatever
> somewhat pointless.

No, it does not. Have a look, how tools are symlinked, have a look at
environment variables passed to both configure & make while build process.