Re: Autoconf 2.54b released

[Akim Demaille]

| > | 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.

Do you mean it?  I fail to see why.  Yes, there is a bit too much
displayed, but relevant information _is_ displayed.  I much prefer
this than mute tools.

| [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)

It might be, indeed, I don't know.  But 2.13 is history.


| > | => 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).

Ever tried -Wall?


| > Yes.  A pity that people don't use -Wobsolete.
| Well, does it matter? 

Yes, of course it does!  Because it makes the code more fragile, so of
course we want to get rid of transitional code.  See also the thread
about --build and the like.


| 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.

Which is why I backed up: I thought the issue had been addressed :(