make caught doing what configure should...

Shouldn't configure look for the pre-generated file when the test for
bison fails?

Is 'test -f' portable?

Is this the right file to patch?  I'm not an autoconf person. :)

Index: configure.in
===================================================================
RCS file: /home/pgcvs/pgsql/configure.in,v
retrieving revision 1.111
diff -c -r1.111 configure.in
*** configure.in    2001/03/20 23:35:18    1.111
--- configure.in    2001/03/23 11:32:16
***************
*** 627,641 ****
  AC_CHECK_PROGS(PERL, perl)

  AC_CHECK_PROGS(YACC, ['bison -y'])
! if test -z "$YACC"; then
!   AC_MSG_WARN([
! *** Without Bison you will not be able to build PostgreSQL from CVS or
! *** change any of the parser definition files.  You can obtain Bison from
! *** a GNU mirror site.  (If you are using the official distribution of
! *** PostgreSQL then you do not need to worry about this because the Bison
! *** output is pre-generated.)  To use a different yacc program (possible,
! *** but not recommended), set the environment variable YACC before running
! *** 'configure'.])
  fi
  AC_SUBST(YFLAGS)

--- 627,640 ----
  AC_CHECK_PROGS(PERL, perl)

  AC_CHECK_PROGS(YACC, ['bison -y'])
! if test -z "$YACC" && test ! -f src/backend/parser/gram.c ; then
!   AC_MSG_ERROR([
! *** 'bison' is missing on your system. It is needed to create the
! *** file 'gram.c'. You can either get bison from a GNU mirror site
! *** or download an official distribution of PostgreSQL, which contains
! *** pre-packaged bison output.
! *** To use a different yacc program (possible, but not recommended), set
! *** the environment variable YACC before running 'configure'.])
  fi
  AC_SUBST(YFLAGS)

--
-Alfred Perlstein - [bright@wintelcom.net|alfred@freebsd.org]
Instead of asking why a piece of software is using "1970s technology,"
start asking why software is ignoring 30 years of accumulated wisdom.