Re: Forbidden strings

[Akim Demaille]

>>>>> "Pavel" == Pavel Roskin <address@hidden> writes:

Pavel> Hello, Akim!
>> The one and only approach is the current one.  Let's stop
>> reinventing the wheel.

Pavel> That's probably too stronly worded :-)

I agree, and I apologize.


>> But what's the point???

Pavel> The point is uniformity. Remember how you were renaming all m4
Pavel> macros so that they would begin with m4.

Yep, precisely!

Pavel> Autoconf developers may need to distinguish separate componets,
Pavel> by for the end user all those m4_ifval, AC_MSG_ERROR and
Pavel> AS_EXIT are parts of the same package - Autoconf.

If the division was unclear, I'd agree with your point.  But here the
separation between AU_ and AC_ is clear, between m4_ and AC_ it is
too, AH_ shares nothing in common with AS_ etc.

Pavel> I'm not going to change your mind. Go ahead if you have a
Pavel> strong opinion.

I do :)

Pavel> Just take my advice. At least once a month take a random big
Pavel> package by search on www.freshmeat.net (Lesstif, openssh,
Pavel> gnome-libs, whatever) and try to run Autoconf. And then put
Pavel> yourself in the position of a guy who knows nothing about our
Pavel> changes and wants to upgrade Autoconf.

I do that Pavel.  I do keep track of how Autoconf behaves with other
packages.  And my hot tasks when 2.49b or 2.49c is to fetch big
packages, and check that it behaves properly.

Pavel> If the libtool team couldn't avoid a name that you want to
Pavel> reserve it is very likely that someone else will encounter the
Pavel> same problem.

That's indeed my claim.  We must not reserve *any* prefix without
giving a means to release our limitation.  I am not turning my back to
the Libtool team.  It is no coincidence that I raised this point
(AR_FLAGS): I do check how CVS Autoconf and CVS Libtool behave
together.  I do work so that they both work perfectly.