Re: autoupdate produces changes for the current ax_* macros from the archive

[Nick Bowler]

Hi Dima,

On 2021-05-19, dima.pasechnik@cs.ox.ac.uk <dima.pasechnik@cs.ox.ac.uk> wrote:
> what is the procedure for fixing autoconf-2.71-incompatible macros in
> the autoconf archive?
[...]
> For instance, autoupdate provides replacements for
> AC_WARNING in ax_compare_version.m4 from
> https://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf-archive/ax_compare_version.html

AC_WARNING has not been removed.

The only change is now you get a warning (with -Wobsolete) and autoupdate
will suggest to change it.  This macro has been deprecated[1] since
Autoconf 2.62 (ca. 2008).

Is there some problem with the replacement suggested by autoupdate?

> Also, there are few weird replacements for aliases generated, e.g.
> -AU_ALIAS([CHECK_SSL], [AX_CHECK_OPENSSL])
> +AU_ALIAS([AX_CHECK_OPENSSL], [AX_CHECK_OPENSSL])
> in ax_check_openssl.m4
> https://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf-archive/ax_check_openssl.html

This is a known problem with autoupdate[2].  It doesn't actually
understand m4 syntax so it often runs into problems similar this one.

As a workaround, you can tweak the quoting to avoid such counterproductive
suggestions in the future; for example:

  AU_ALIAS([CHECK_][OPENSSL], [AX_CHECK_OPENSSL])

[1] 
https://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/autoconf/manual/autoconf-2.62/autoconf.html#index-AC_005fWARNING-1271
[2] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-autoconf/2021-01/msg00023.html