Re: configure.in vs. configure.ac

[Eric Blake]

On 09/12/2012 05:11 PM, Eric Blake wrote:
> On 09/12/2012 03:57 PM, Karl Berry wrote:
>>     [Autoconf is deprecating the name 'configure.in']
>>
>>     rms> ... its configure.in file ...
>>
>> See how prevalent the configure.in name is in people's minds, let alone
>> software?  I hope you will reconsider your decision to "deprecate" it.
> 
> It has already been deprecated for more than 10 years (since autoconf
> 2.50 in 2001), and is costing active maintainer effort to support both
> names.  These days, no one in their right mind uses anything older than
> autoconf 2.59.  Furthermore, if you care enough about your project to
> update to a newer version of autoconf, renaming configure.in to
> configure.ac is probably not the only thing you will have to change if
> your project has been that far behind the times.
> 
> https://www.gnu.org/software/autoconf/manual/autoconf.html#Writing-Autoconf-Input

That said, we have only barely added a patch to autoconf to be more
vocal about the deprecation, so it will probably STILL be several more
years before we can actually remove support for the name from autoconf
without it happening to unaware users.  It is possible to use autoconf
without automake, and those are the users most likely to be hit if we
pull the feature completely.  Therefore, I have no problem if automake
pulls support for the name prior to when autoconf pulls support.

-- 
Eric Blake   address@hidden    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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