Re: Question on AC_PREREQ

[Stepan Kasal]

Hello,

> According to Sebastian Pipping on 12/11/2007 1:13 AM:
> > While were talking about AC_PREREQ: I thought maybe requiring
> > version "2.61a" would be a bad idea if an older version like
> > "2.60" is enough already, especially with an alpha version.

I agree that AC_PREREQ should ideally specify the oldest version
possible.

In real-life, I believe the following rough solution might be
sufficient:
- install an oldish version of Autoconf and Automake, test that the
  setup works, and write the version numbers to configure.ac
- If a developer complains that a particular combination does not
  work, install the versions he reported, and if the problem can be
  reproduced, increase the requirements, adding a comment.

At this time, no one should use versions older than Autoconf 2.59 and
Automake 1.9.6.  So I suggest that you temporarily downgradde to
these, run "rm -r autom4te.cache&&autoreconf -f" and test the result.
If it seems to work, specify
        AC_PREREQ([2.59])
        ...
        AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE([1.9.6])
in configure.ac initially.

(If things work with 2.59 and with the latest devel build, the chance
that they will break with one of the inbetween versions is not that big.)

        Stepan Kasal