Re: Broken makefile given Autoconf version mismatch

[Noah Misch]

On Tue, Apr 18, 2006 at 10:06:40AM -0600, Bob Proulx wrote:
> Noah Misch wrote:
> > Alexandre Duret-Lutz wrote:
> > > I'm leery of assuming that Autoconf's version will always be at
> > > this spot in the output of --version.  Sometimes people customize their
> > > copy and tweak --version to reflect so:
> > > ...
> > > % gcc --version
> > > gcc (GCC) 4.0.3 (Debian 4.0.3-1)

Another thought -- To defend against customizations of this nature, we could use
the entire first line of `autoconf --version', rather than attempting to parse
out a version number.

> > With respect to `--version' output, GNU Coding Standards state, `The
> > first line is meant to be easy for a program to parse; the version
> > number proper starts after the last space.'  Customizing `gcc
> > --version' in this way certainly is common, but it does violate the
> > Coding Standards.
> 
> I can see what is being attempted, to identify something as having
> patches making it no longer strictly an upstream version.  That seems
> admirable.  But perhaps the implementation could be improved.  Perhaps
> instead of "gcc (GCC) 4.0.3 (Debian 4.0.3-1)" the output could join
> the version with "gcc (GCC) 4.0.3.Debian-1" or some such?  Or at the
> possibly it should be "gcc (GCC) 4.0.3 Debian 4.0.3-1" such that the
> version after the last space is 4.0.3-1 and an intended representative
> version number?

Yes; those look reasonable.