Re: m4 quoting change? (2.52->2.53)

[Roger Leigh]

On Mon, Apr 08, 2002 at 11:08:28AM +0200, Akim Demaille wrote:
> 
> | Running autoheader for a second time does not generate these
> | warnings--is this autom4te?
> 
> Yes.  This is the remainder of a discussion that never really ended.
> autom4te is here to cache, so it looses some side effects, such as
> warnings.  We could fight to have them cached too, but I don't know if
> it is really needed.  Use --force wen you don't trust it.

OK.  Are autom4te and m4sugar to abstract autoconf away from m4, to allow
replacement with e.g. autogen, so you can implement m4 with autogen?

> | The code in question is quite simple:

[snip error]

> I'm afraid you found a bug in 2.53.  I tend to think it is the bug
> that was introduced in m4_bmatch.  I observe the following:

[snip observations]

> this is the current CVS Autoconf.  So the problem is gone.  Sorry for the
> confusion.  We plan to issue 2.54 in the near future.

OK, thanks.  I did think that this was me--not keeping up fast enough
with new autoconf features!

Thanks for the explanation--I look forward to 2.54.

> | Another question is upgrading between different versions of autoconf.
> | Are there any version-specific macros I can use to cater for use with
> | incompatible versions of automake? (In m4 macros, not configure.ac.)
> 
> I'm sorry, I don't understand exactly what you mean here.

If I write a macro that I want to work with several autoconf versions,
is there any way I can special-case what to do when run with a specific
version.  For example, a macro containing the current version of
autoconf.  If would also be possible to write a conditional macro using
this, to do one thing if the version is >= the requested version, or
another thing if less.

The reason I want this is so that I can upgrade the version of autoconf
I use, and update the m4 macros to work with it, but also support the
old versions of autoconf in use by others to make the transition
easier--it can be difficult to manage to get everyone to upgrade to the
same version of the autotools!

It's probably a bad idea, but could have some useful applications.

Regards,
Roger

-- 
Roger Leigh
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