Re: expected Autoconf 2.59 <-> 2.60 compatibility?

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hi Ben,

* Ben Pfaff wrote on Wed, May 10, 2006 at 02:26:12AM CEST:
> 
> Autoconf 2.60 has had a long development cycle too, but I'm
> hoping that it is not sufficiently different from 2.59 to make it
> necessary to package it separately from 2.59.  I'm basing this
> mostly on the NEWS, which primarily lists new macros.  However,
> it does list some behavioral changes as well, e.g. the change in
> the expansion of @top_builddir@ and the behavior of
> AC_SUBST_FILE.
> 
> Does anyone have input on whether these changes are cumulatively
> important enough to break much software?

The change that AC_PROG_CC/AC_PROG_CXX won't provide a declaration for
exit(3) any more, will impact C++ and C99-using projects; they need to
go over their macros to make sure these don't fail for the wrong reason.

The datarootdir change will have some impact (mostly on packages not
using Automake), but it comes with warning belts for most cases (another
patch to come up here).

Anyone relying on the earlier AC_SUBST_FILE semantics was relying on
non-portable sed features anyway.

I concur with the others that a major incompatibility not noted in NEWS
should make way for a quick 2.61, if it can be fixed.

Hope that helps.

Cheers,
Ralf