Re: [PATCH] AC_CONFIG_MACRO_DIRS: improve tracing and add sanity checks

[Adrian Bunk]

On Mon, Nov 12, 2012 at 03:40:50PM -0500, Nick Bowler wrote:
>...
> But I still maintain that it is much easier to not make any changes
> whatsoever to AC_CONFIG_MACRO_DIR: i.e., do nothing.
>...

We must not force all users to update their configure.ac only because 
they updated autoconf/automake/libtool.

That would extremely annoy everyone using autoconf/automake/libtool.

And for a distribution like Debian where over 800 packages have a build 
dependency on libtool (usually calling libtoolize at package build time)
that could also cause problems.

If libtool will get the information in a different way, then that new 
way must return the same information - and that implies that autoconf 
now has to do something with AC_CONFIG_MACRO_DIR.

If there is no proper solution to handle multiple AC_CONFIG_MACRO_DIR in 
a backwards-compatible way, then a clear failure is at least better than 
silently changed behavior. On a positive side, multiple 
AC_CONFIG_MACRO_DIR doesn't seem to be that common in existing
configure.ac usage.

cu
Adrian

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed