Begin forwarded message:

Date: 8 March 2005 18:20:48 GMT
To: bug-autoconf@gnu.org
Subject: Autoconf asked me to tell you about this bug

On a clean FreeBSD 5.3 machine, do:

  cd /usr/local/lang/python
  make install

and you will see, amongst other things:

checking locale.h usability... yes
checking locale.h presence... yes
checking for locale.h... yes
checking ncurses.h usability... no
checking ncurses.h presence... yes
configure: WARNING: ncurses.h: present but cannot be compiled
configure: WARNING: ncurses.h: check for missing prerequisite 
headers?
configure: WARNING: ncurses.h: proceeding with the 
preprocessor's result
configure: WARNING:     ## ------------------------------------ ##
configure: WARNING:     ## Report this to bug-autoconf@gnu.org. 
##
configure: WARNING:     ## ------------------------------------ ##
checking for ncurses.h... yes
checking poll.h usability... yes
checking poll.h presence... yes
checking for poll.h... yes
checking pthread.h usability... yes
checking pthread.h presence... yes
checking for pthread.h... yes

---

Begin forwarded message:

Date: 9 March 2005 11:47:03 GMT
To: Richard Brooksby <rb@ravenbrook.com>
Cc: bug-autoconf@gnu.org
Subject: Re: Autoconf asked me to tell you about this bug

Hello,

On Tue, Mar 08, 2005 at 06:20:48PM +0000, Richard Brooksby 
wrote:
On a clean FreeBSD 5.3 machine, do:
  cd /usr/local/lang/python

you should report this bug to the bug report address of the 
"python"
project.  Tell them to read the section "Present But Cannot Be 
Compiled"
of the manual to autoconf-2.59.

They have misconfigured the bug report address in AC_INIT, so 
also tell
them to change it to *their* bug report address.

Logged In: YES 
user_id=21627

That information does not help to resolve the problem, and
it is not clear that it is a problem in Python's configure -
it could be a bug in your operating system installation also.

Please attach the config.log.

Logged In: YES 
user_id=927536

Sorry if the text isn't helpful -- I'm just following instructions.  Please find 
config.log attached.

Logged In: YES 
user_id=21627

Thanks for the report! Looking at the file, I see

In file included from configure:4766:
/usr/include/ncurses.h:289: error: conflicting types for
'wchar_t'
/usr/include/stdlib.h:58: error: previous declaration of
'wchar_t' was here

So it looks like your system has conflicting definitions of
wchar_t, one in ncurses.h, and one in stdlib.h. I thought I
had seen this before, but I cannot find a resolution. You
might want to report this to the FreeBSD people.

As for the autoconf manual hint: they propose to perform
further includes to make the header compilable. However,
since the header is truly broken, this is no solution.

As for the hint to change the bug reporting address: I have
now done this, and committed this change as

configure.in 1.475.2.7
configure 1.462.2.7
configure.in 1.483
configure 1.470

Closing the report as fixed, 3rd party.