Re: configure.lineno?

[Alexandre Duret-Lutz]

>>> "Daniel" == Daniel Reed <address@hidden>
>>> "Eric" == Eric Sunshine <address@hidden>

 Eric> Nevertheless, DOS will silently truncate those to
 Eric> "config.sta" and "configur", both of which are still
 Eric> valid filenames.  However, the second period in
 Eric> "config.status.lineno" is simply incompatible with DOS
 Eric> naming convention which allows only a single period.

Is this file created on 8+3 platforms?  For instance I believe
DJGPP uses bash, which supports $LINENO.  I suspect there might
be no issue.

 Daniel> There is already some precedent for ignoring such
 Daniel> restrictions: Autoconf's autoheader will happily create
 Daniel> src/config.h.in given an AC_CONFIG_HEADER of
 Daniel> src/config.h and no explicit infile. 

We should just ensure that users _can_ write a package that
build on such platform.  Using config.hin instead of config.h.in
is documented, many people do it.

 Daniel> Automake will generate files like
 Daniel> PACKAGE-MAJOR.MINOR.tar.gz and
 Daniel> PACKAGE-MAJOR.MINOR.tar.bz2 for "make dist" rules.

This seems less important, because IFAICT no one wants to run
`make dist' on a platform where all filenames (starting with
configure) have been truncated.  The resulting package would
simply not work on other systems.

[...]

 Daniel> the point that Autotools doesn't *really* support
 Daniel> strictly-8.3 environments.

IMHO that can justify improvements, not status quo.

Thanks to Richard Dawe, Automake 1.7.3 and Autoconf 2.58
included several changes to improve portability to DJGPP.
-- 
Alexandre Duret-Lutz