Re: [PATCH] Fix Autoconf version required by Automake's configure.

[Stefano Lattarini]

At Friday 30 April 2010, Eric Blake <address@hidden> wrote:
> On 04/30/2010 08:56 AM, Stefano Lattarini wrote:
> > Hello automakers.
> >
> > Apparently, Automake configure script tells that automake
> > requires autoconf 2.60 or later, but then it checks for autoconf 
> > >= 2.62, and if it is not found it aborts saying that automake
> > requires configure 2.61a-341 or later.  The attached patch should
> > fix this.
> 
> Your proposed patch delays the check until configure time.
Well, the pre-existing checks themselves were run only at configure 
time.  And IMHO this is a correct behaviour, since the autoconf 
version required to *use* automake and run its testsuite isn't 
necessarly the same autoconf version required for its developement 
(e.g. for the regeneration of its configure script).
> I'm wondering if a better patch would be to make it consistent at
> autoreconf time, by making the required version an m4 macro that
> is literally substituted into the configure file, rather than a
> shell variable.
Maybe I'm failing to understand your proposal, but I see no point in 
doing this at present.  What would that buy us exactly?

By the way, adding an AC_PREREQ call in Automake's own configure.ac 
would be nice IMHO; I didn't do that because I don't know what is the
minimal autoconf version truly required by Automake's own configure.ac.

Regards,
    Stefano