Re: Autoconf 2.54 is released

[Sascha Schumann]

> Are these unscientific tests available somewhere, e.g., in an email
> archive?  Or can you point to a .tar.gz file somewhere where autoconf
> 2.13 is much faster than autoconf 2.5x?  Either bit of info would help
> us track down the problem.

    http://snaps.php.net/php4-latest.tar.bz2

    Do a ./cvsclean followed by "time ./buildconf" to reproduce.

> Without knowing the symptoms, I suspect that Autoconf 2.54 is
> overenthusiastically using m4, and that it's an m4 combinatorial
> explosion somewhere; but without test cases it's hard to be sure.

    Quite possible..

    Timing shows..

    With autoconf 2.13

    real    0m17.685s
    user    0m11.169s
    sys     0m4.159s

    With autoconf 2.54

    real    1m12.457s
    user    1m0.532s
    sys     0m3.414s

    GNU m4 1.4
    automake (GNU automake) 1.6.3
    ltmain.sh (GNU libtool) 1.4.2 (1.922.2.53 2001/09/11 03:18:52)

    Tested on FreeBSD, results on Solaris and Linux are similar.

    - Sascha