Sorry, but it doesn't work as expected.

$ ./configure
...
checking for ar... false
checking for ranlib... :
checking for strip... :
...

$ gmake
...
gmake[2]: Entering directory `/tmp/gsl-1.7.91/utils'
/bin/bash ../libtool --tag=CC --mode=compile gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I..     -g -O2 -c -o placeholder.lo placeholder.c
mkdir .libs
 gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I.. -g -O2 -c placeholder.c  -fPIC -DPIC -o .libs/placeholder.o
 gcc -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -I. -I. -I.. -g -O2 -c placeholder.c -o placeholder.o >/dev/null 2>&1
/bin/bash ../libtool --tag=CC --mode=link gcc  -g -O2   -o libutils.la   placeholder.lo  -lm 
false cru .libs/libutils.a .libs/placeholder.o
gmake[2]: *** [libutils.la] Error 1
gmake[2]: Leaving directory `/tmp/gsl-1.7.91/utils'
gmake[1]: *** [all-recursive] Error 1
...

(the complete logs are attached)

Obviously ar and ranlib are necessary to compile gsl and configure should complain about it 
the same way it does for a missing gcc :

$ export CC=ccc && ./configure
...
checking for gcc... ccc
checking for C compiler default output file name... configure: error: C compiler cannot create executables
See `config.log' for more details.
$

-- 
Stefan Gerlach

On Wednesday 29 March 2006 14:57, Brian Gough wrote:
> Stefan Gerlach writes:
>  > After defining RANLIB=granlib, AR=gar and MAKE=gmake "gmake" and "gmake
>  > check" works now.
>  > Shouldn't "configure" print out an error message if "ar" wasn't found?
>
> Can you try this update and tell me if it makes any difference:
>
> http://network-theory.co.uk/download/gsl/gsl-1.7.91.tar.gz
> http://network-theory.co.uk/download/gsl/gsl-1.7.91.tar.gz.sig
>
> If it still happens I'd like to see the complete configure output,
> config.log and the PATH.
>
> I've looked into the other errors on SUSE, they are from libtool but
> are just stray messages, they don't affect the compilation.
>
> checking dynamic linker characteristics... cat: /etc/ld.so.conf.d/*.conf:
> No such file or directory
>
> mkdir .libs
> mkdir: cannot create directory `.libs': File exists