Re: bug#11793: AM_MISSING_PROG undocumented

[Stefano Lattarini]

On 06/28/2012 12:01 AM, Eric Blake wrote:
> On 06/26/2012 04:56 PM, Stefano Lattarini wrote:
> 
>>>> AM_MISSING_PROG has been around for a while (git log says it was
>>>> introduced in 1997, although the current two-argument version appears to
>>>> date back to commit 9ae48df in Nov 1999), and seems like something
>>>> stable enough to be worth guaranteeing.
>>>
>>> And if we document AM_MISSING_PROG, then autoconf should suggest using it.
>>>
>> Or, given that 'missing' in its current lightweight incarnation has become
>> a more flexible, predictable and probably also more stable tool, it could
>> be moved (together with the definition of the AM_MISSING_PROG macro) to a
>> third-party package (either Autoconf or Gnulib).  WDYT?
> 
> I'm not quite ready for that; it's still pretty heavily tied to automake
> (the idea of what forms a maintainer tool vs. a normal tool is more
> automake's domain, not autoconf's).  I'm happy to keep 'missing' in
> automake for a while longer, and remove it from gnulib mirroring, which
> will give automake the freedom to improve it as an internal tool.
> 
OK, agreed.

Thanks,
  Stefano