automake
[Top][All Lists]
Advanced

[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Re: config.sub/config.guess using nonportable $(...) substitutions


From: Paul Eggert
Subject: Re: config.sub/config.guess using nonportable $(...) substitutions
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 2021 12:26:03 -0800
User-agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64; rv:78.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/78.7.1

On 3/9/21 11:09 AM, Karl Berry wrote:

I fully disagree. (Along with, it seems, everyone else except
you and Ben.)

Ben is the main person to convince here, since he's the maintainer.

I am a bit disenheartened to see that Ben hasn't sent any email to this list since he installed the change in question, back in November. If he's retired (which I hope not), we'll need to find a new maintainer whose lap we can dump this problem into. I'll cc this email to him to give him a heads-up about the thread.

1) There is no actual benefit to using $(...) over `...`.

I disagree with that statement on technical grounds (not merely cosmetic grounds), as I've run into real problems in using `...` along with " and \, problems that I would not have run into with $(...). The Autoconf manual describes some of these problems.[1]

Talking about # as an analogy is a red herring. # does not cause
real-life problem.

# caused a real-life problem for me on a real-life system, around 1979. Of course the problem set has changed since then, but the compatibility principle hasn't.

[1] https://www.gnu.org/savannah-checkouts/gnu/autoconf/manual/autoconf-2.70/html_node/Shell-Substitutions.html



reply via email to

[Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread]