re: new vs old autoconf / Re: checking for non-standard headers

[Guido Draheim]

Thomas Dickey wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 12, 2003 at 11:24:35AM +0200, Guido Draheim wrote:
>
> > Oh well, I know the situation all too well - the distro makers
>
>
> yes, what a shame that the current autoconf developers chose to not
> make their changes compatible, so one could easily slide an old
> script into the new system.  Instead, they've concentrated their
> efforts on blaming the users.
>
> (waiting for 2.58, which is about 8 months overdue ;-)

where are the changes that can not be fixed with an additional
[...] or eval call? Most older scripts can be easily updated
without any change in the actual control flow, about the scripts
I've seen it were 99% adding [..] or [[..]] around arguments to
the macros. It's easy to blame the developers who ask for more
strict usage of the system and to call it bugs thereby refusing
to even look into what cosmetics might be needed to make the
old script slide easily into the new system ;-)

Apart from that, I need an update only for the drastic annoyance
about ac_init/am_init_automake which does not quite allow to
compute package name and version dynamically from information out
of another file. In all other cases, I'm quite fine... what features
are overdue by your records, Thomas?

btw, http://qa.mandrakesoft.com/show_bug.cgi?id=4698 for another
indication that new-vs-old is still a major pain these days as
distro makers are shipping atleast two versions of the software
and developers need to have some awareness of that. Which should
not be in the first place of course.

cheers,
-- guido                                  http://AC-Archive.sf.net
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