Re: Report this to address@hidden

[Stepan Kasal]

Hi James,

On Fri, Mar 04, 2005 at 09:40:13AM +0000, James Youngman wrote:
> In retrospect it would have saved many emails to this mailing list if
> the error message had indicated explicitly that the bug is in the
> package being configured, not in autoconf.  The message could even
> have included a reference to the correct section of the Autoconf
> manual.

current CVS autoconf does it.

> > They have misconfigured the bug report address in AC_INIT, so also tell
> > them to change it to *their* bug report address.
> 
> I didn't know about this.  It seems to me to be sensible to make that
> argument non-optional if every maintainer should change it. 

Well, it's optional, but it doesn't default to address@hidden
(And doubt it defaulted to bug-autoconf in previous versions.)

The package maintainer has to paste the line

        AC_INIT(Autoconf Documentation, 2.59, address@hidden)

from the autoconf manual, in order to direct his bug reports to our
black hole.  But perhaps the examples should use a non-existent
address, like address@hidden in order to make the issue more explicit.
(Moreover, AC_INIT could check for address@hidden, because you never
know what people can do...)

Have a nice day,
        Stepan