Re: AC_PACKAGE_VERSION visibility slightly changed in autoconf-2.69c. Bug or feature?

[Zack Weinberg]

On Thu, Oct 22, 2020 at 12:20 PM Nick Bowler <nbowler@draconx.ca> wrote:
...
> > And it also works as expected with the zack/ac-init-quoting branch if I
> > simply revert the patch hunks identified earlier in this thread:
> >
> >   % autoconf-zack-patched
> >   % ./configure
> >   2.69c.10-6487-dirty
> >   foo-bug@[192.0.2.1]
> >   foo-bug@[192.0.2.1]
> >   configure: creating ./config.status
> >
> > If the hunks are not reverted, quotation problems are readily apparent:
> >
> >   % autoconf-zack-unpatched
>
> (and obviously I ran configure here...)
>
> >   2.69c.10-6487
> >   foo-bug@[192.0.2.1]
> >   [foo-bug@[192.0.2.1]]
> >   configure: creating ./config.status
> >
> > (those patch hunks are not the only instances of overquotation added by the
> > patch, I see that the patch also overquotes the bugreport address in the
> > configure --help text)

I acknowledge that requiring double-quotation of AC_INIT arguments
when they contain characters significant to M4 _should_ work; however,
it did not work in my tests (which were not exactly the same as the
above; see the "AC_INIT with unusual version strings" test case in
tests/base.m4, on the branch).  Also, it increases the compat hit
we're taking, since e.g.

    AC_INIT(GNU MP, GMP_VERSION, [gmp-bugs@gmplib.org, see
    https://gmplib.org/manual/Reporting-Bugs.html], gmp)

which also worked with 2.69, will now be considered invalid, and there
are more scripts that do things like this than there are scripts that
require expansion of AC_PACKAGE_TARNAME when used internally. I _am_
fine with this compat hit if Paul and Eric are, if we can come up with
a patch that actually works, and if we can figure out a way to
document the new requirements.

Would you care to propose a complete patch to be applied on top of
zack/ac-init-quoting?  In addition to "reverting hunks" you would need
to make sure that AC_PACKAGE_* are always treated consistently within
lib/autoconf/*.m4, fix the testsuite by adding double quotation to
AC_INIT arguments where necessary, and document in both
doc/autoconf.texi and NEWS the changed requirements for AC_INIT
arguments.

zw