Re: TODO additions

[Richard Stallman]

    > That would be very difficult.  Even if we could have Autoconf figure
    > out every relevant parameter, and have eliminate the s and m
    > directories, that would not eliminate the need for preprocessing of
    > src/Makefile.in.

    I don't understand why.  That's the canonical use of autoconf, and
    it's clearly more reliable than using a cpp which may not exist.

Sorry, I don't understand that response at all.

Autoconf substitutes various values into config.h and Makefile.in.
The preprocessing operates on the result.  Right now the symbols that
it tests are mostly defined in {s,m}*.h, but if those symbols were
instead defined in config.h thanks to Autoconf, we would still need to
use them to edit the makefile.

I think it will be hard to make Autoconf set those symbols.  For
instance, consider the variable ORDINARY_LINK.  How would Autoconf
determine that?  It is possible that all modern systems use
ORDINARY_LINK and we can eliminate the conditional, but otherwise
I see no substitute for handling it the way we do now.