Re: Document AS_VERSION_COMPARE.

[Eric Blake]

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According to Ralf Wildenhues on 10/7/2008 2:27 PM:
> I'd like to use AS_VERSION_COMPARE in AM_PROG_VALAC in Automake.
> Thus I propose to document it in Autoconf now.
> 
> Do you think this is ok?  Should the relationship with
> m4_version_compare be documented better?  I haven't checked
> but I think they have slightly different semantics, too.

They are different semantics.  And what's worse, both semantics are
slightly different from coreutils 7.0 'sort --version-sort' semantics,
just recently hashed out on the gnulib list.  But the awk implementation
looks like it is a shoo-in for strverscmp (not to mention that
tests/m4sh.at copies the strverscmp test vector from glibc), and since
that is what you documented, I think the patch is okay.  Please apply.

I wonder if we will ever want to change semantics of either (or both)
m4_version_compare and AS_VERSION_COMPARE to try to match gnulib's
filevercmp semantics (now in use by coreutils), as that handles suffixes
like ~ and .tar* in a nicer manner than strverscmp; but we can revisit the
documentation at that time.

- --
Don't work too hard, make some time for fun as well!

Eric Blake             address@hidden
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