Re: configure.lineno?

[Eric Sunshine]

Paul Eggert wrote:
> Eric Sunshine <address@hidden> writes:
> > The configure scripts generated by the newest versions of Autoconf leave a  
> > configure.lineno file sitting around after running the configure script.  Is  
> > this intentional?
> I suspect so, as it helps debugging on hosts that lack line-number
> support.  Automake removes it as part of "make distclean".

This seems wholly unnecessary.  configure.lineno is an implementation 
detail which ensures that config.log will contain appropriate line 
number references, however the utility of configure.lineno expires once 
configure.lineno itself is done executing.  The line numbers recorded in 
config.log will always validly reference lines in configure itself, and 
a user reading the line numbers for debugging purposes will always 
consult the mentioned lines in configure, rather than configure.lineno. 
    There is no additional information to be gleaned from 
configure.lineno which is not already available from configure itself. 
Thus, configure.lineno is superfluous once execution terminates. 
Consequently, it is safe for configure to delete configure.lineno.

-- ES