Re: converting netkit to autoconf?

[Paul Eggert]

> From: Russ Allbery <address@hidden>
> Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2002 14:35:59 -0700
> 
> Quoting in m4 is insane.

True, but every language has insane quoting rules.  M4's rules are
sometimes painful, but the shell's (say) are often worse.  And don't
get me started about the oddities of the various Lisp quoting rules.

I have been toying with the idea of redoing Autoconf without M4, by
just using the shell.  The basic idea here is that we have to live
with shell quoting anyway, so let's use that and not have two kinds of
quoting.  I would assume a POSIX 1003.2-1992 shell or later, as I
think it's OK to cut that backward-compatibility cord.  However, this
is A Big Change, and one that is not to be taken lightly.

> One obvious improvement that could be made is to put substantial code
> fragments for tests in their own files

I don't agree that this would be an improvement.  I don't want to have
zillions of tiny little files to maintain.  And, all too often, one
must plop arbitrary symbols into the middle of test files.