Re: boost macros use non-portable tac

[Peter Simons]

Hi Peter,

 > I noticed that some AX_BOOST macros now [1] depend on 'tac', which is
 > not portable. In particular we experience problem on OSX and found the
 > best solution was to downgrade the macros. As one of the major point
 > with Autoconf is to have a portable shell script 'configure', it seems
 > odd to add dependency to something like 'tac'. It is, of course,
 > debatable which tools are standard and not, but in an official archive
 > like this, I think it would make sense to follow the GNU Coding Standard
 > [2] and only use tools listed there: awk cat cmp cp diff echo egrep expr
 > false grep install-info ln ls mkdir mv printf pwd rm rmdir sed sleep
 > sort tar test touch tr true.
 >
 > Any opinions?
 >
 > Cheers,
 > Peter
 >
 >
 > [1] http://savannah.gnu.org/patch/index.php?7816
 > [2] http://www.gnu.org/prep/standards/standards.html#Utilities-in-Makefiles

you raise a valid point. Some systems may not have tac, so it's surely
better not to depend on that utility. At the same time, the patch that
introduced the dependency had a valid use case, too. So how do we deal
with that? Does m4 have something we can use instead of depending on
tac?

Take care,
Peter