Which Perl versions Autoconf needs

[Paul Eggert]

On 2023-03-29 16:32, Jacob Bachmeyer wrote:

> Is there anything more needed from me to get similar fixes into Autoconf?

I started to do that, by installing this:

https://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/autoconf.git/commit/?id=e2220ed33e69d8bc6504e3f6279894afe33a99a5

into Autoconf master on Savannah and then drafting the attached patch. 
However, the attached patch is not right, because some other Perl 5.10 
code is now in autoconf/build-aux/help-extract.pl (and perhaps a few 
other places; I haven't checked). So I did not install this draft patch.

If it's easy to backport help-extract.pl (and etc.?) to older Perl then 
feel free to come up with an additional patch set. If not, I wouldn't 
worry too much. As Warren mentioned, these old Perls are getting rare on 
platforms that users are likely to be running Autoconf on.

I ran into this issue when testing the latest Autoconf release candidate 
on Solaris 10, which ships with Perl 5.8.4. Although Solaris 10 is 
obsolescent Oracle says they will support it through January 2024.

0001-Go-back-to-requiring-only-Perl-5.6.patch
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