[sr #107986] autoconf should reject or specifically warn about obviously wrong configure.ac files

[David A. Wheeler]

Follow-up Comment #2, sr #107986 (project autoconf):

Okay, I have developed a git format-patch (attached) to detect a failure to
use AC_INIT. With this patch, if "autoconf" is invoked using an empty
"configure.ac" (for example), it correctly fails and reports:
autoconf: error: Failed to use AC_INIT in the input file configure.ac.

HOWEVER, autoreconf seems to ignore and hide ALL errors returned by autoconf,
including this one, so "autoreconf -i" doesn't error out as I expected. That
behavior seems fundamentally wrong. Is that the *expected* behavior? Or am I
missing something obvious?

This doesn't do everything I suggested, but it's a first step and useful.  I
think it's better to do this sort of thing incrementally, so here is an
increment.


(file #25396)
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Additional Item Attachment:

File name: 0001-autoconf-Fail-if-AC_INIT-not-used.patch Size:0 KB


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