Re: AC_PROG_SED: rejected?

[Akim Demaille]

>>>>> "Paul" == Paul Eggert <address@hidden> writes:

>> From: Robert Boehne <address@hidden> Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2002
>> 11:05:38 -0600

>> I haven't seen any discussion of it after my last tweak to the
>> patch, but it hasn't been checked in.

Paul> I assume you're talking about this URL?

Paul> http://mail.gnu.org/pipermail/autoconf-patches/2002-January/008138.html

Paul> I don't know of any reason that the patch was rejected, so it's
Paul> probably still in the queue.

It is indeed, I apologize for not having answered to it :(

Paul> The ChangeLog says that Akim removed AC_PROG_SED on 2000-02-10;
Paul> perhaps he can explain why it was removed.  

Because it was too dedicated.  It has nothing to do with this copy of
AC_PROG_SED.  It was at the time I was working on speeding up
config.status, so I needed a check to see the limitations of sed.  I
removed it, because anyway the very notation of sed limitations is so
unclear, that it seemed unreliable to try to adjust dynamically to it
(I'm referring to the fact that some sed have limitations on the
number of bytes in the program, some on the number of commands, and,
IIRC, some on the sum of the sizes of patterns!!!  I hope I left
traces of my experiments in the documentation...).

So, given that it seemed to be asking for troubles, I dropped it.



Paul> AC_PROG_SED wasn't in Autoconf 2.13, but the ChangeLog doesn't
Paul> say when or why it was added.  Presumably it was some internals
Paul> thing.

More or less.

Paul> In your message you wrote:

>> I was thinking that I would tack on LT_ to the macro name (after
>> expanding post-2.50 Autoconf macros in it), add it to Libtool, and
>> then when AC_PROG_SED is available in a released version of
>> Autoconf, remove my private copy.  Does that sound sane?

Paul> and the answer to that question is "yes".

I think it is a cool idea in general to have such additional
features.  Just give me some time to look at it.  If I don't answer,
please, just install it.

But (you may have done it, I don't, I still have to look at it):

1. think about NEWS
2. think about lib/autoscan/programs