Re: [bug-gnulib] uniform #serial number for M4 macros, and `aclocal --install'

[Alexandre Duret-Lutz]

>>> "Paul" == Paul Eggert <address@hidden> writes:

[...]

 Paul> Would it be too much trouble to add an option that is
 Paul> like "--install", but simply warns you that your .m4
 Paul> files might be out of date, without actually installing
 Paul> them?  The basic idea is that it should be easy to diff
 Paul> the changes before actually installing them.

Would `--install --dry-run' be OK, assuming aclocal prints the
file it wants to update/install ?  (--dry-run would prevent
aclocal.m4 and m4 files from being touched, but would still
update autom4te.cache/ because autom4te needs to be run.)

--dry-run looks trivial to implement.

Or did you want something that diagnose old #serials using the
logic of --install, but still do not honor #serial numbers and
follow the traditional search path order (what happens with
--install)?  Doing so would require more data structures and
code, hence yet another mode to debug and maintain.  If we can
avoid this I'd really like too; aclocal's guts are already quite
hairy.
-- 
Alexandre Duret-Lutz