Re: Autoconf 2.54b released

[Ralf Corsepius]

Am Mon, 2002-10-28 um 18.37 schrieb Akim Demaille:
> 
> | Incompatibilities? 
> | 
> | AFAIS, more than one: The tarball below demonstrates some of them and a
> | bug:
> | 
> | # autoreconf -f
> | autoreconf -f
> | configure.ac:12: warning: back quotes and double quotes must not be
> | escaped in: $as_me:$LINENO: error: invalid value passed to
> | --enable-foo=\"a b c\"
> | configure.ac:12: warning: back quotes and double quotes must not be
> | escaped in: $as_me: error: invalid value passed to --enable-foo=\"a b
> | c\"
> | configure.ac:12: warning: back quotes and double quotes must not be
> | escaped in: $as_me:$LINENO: error: invalid value passed to
> | --enable-foo=\"a b c\"
> | configure.ac:12: warning: back quotes and double quotes must not be
> | escaped in: $as_me: error: invalid value passed to --enable-foo=\"a b
> | c\"
> | 
> | Issues: 
> | 1. The error messages are broken ($as_me, $LINENO)
> 
> Correct, but I can't fix this easily.
Bad, this renders this kind of warnings to be of little use.

[About to introduce another way of bugwardness, are you? SCNR ;)]

> | 2. The topic it complains about is using \" in AC_HELP_STRING. 
> | There had been times, where this had been necessary to prevent autoconf
> | from removing '"'-quotes in AC_HELP_STRING. 
> 
> Could you provide us with some details?  I'm not aware of this issue.
IIRC, using \' and \" in strings passed to AC_MSG_* and AC_HELP_STRING
was the only way to let both autoconf-2.13 and autoconf-2.5x print out '
and ". (I currently can't verify)

> | => incompatibility to previous versions of autoconf-2.5x
> 
> Err, it is not incompatible, it's just a warning.  But I hear your
> complain, and will delay this issue till another release.
Well, I was surprised to see autoconf complain about something that had
been working for ages (The real-world code that triggers this is several
years old).

> | Worse: Using AM_PROG_LIBTOOL apparently triggers this issue, too.
> 
> Yes.  A pity that people don't use -Wobsolete.
Well, does it matter? 

People do expect libtool and autoconf to interact smoothly, straight out
of the box, without further intervention, like they claimed to have done
in the past.

=> autoconf-2.54+ and libtool are incompatible.
=> libtool-1.4.3 (This also exposes the problem) is not autoconf-2.54b
compatible.

> | 3. Unlike previous versions of autoconf-2.5x, autoconf-2.54 produces
Of cause I meant 2.54b.
> | automate.cache directories (Instead of autom4te.cache as previous
> | versions did). Why this change?
> 
> Aaaaaaaaaaarg!  Typo!  Thanks!
If all problems were so simple to solve ;)

Ralf