[OpenAFS-devel] Autoconf 2.60 requirement

[Russ Allbery]

Andrew Deason <adeason@sinenomine.net> writes:

> Running regen.sh can occur on any machine before you build, but it can
> get a bit annoying if you're used to just pulling from git and building
> on systems with older autoconf's. This email serves to publicly notify
> people that this has happened, and to welcome any objections people may
> have. This probably should have been sent out before we made the move to
> require 2.60, but when AC_USE_SYSTEM_EXTENSIONS was first added, I
> didn't realize it was a new autoconf addition. 'Oops'

I did.

I strongly support requiring newer versions of Autoconf rather than using
inferior probes or reinventing the wheel, particularly when they're
already nearly four years old.  Autoconf is improving significantly in
ways that require one to maintain far less code in each package.  If one
absolutely must do development on a very slow-releasing platform with
outdated software, Autoconf is trivial to install (assuming that M4 isn't
so ancient that it can't run Autoconf).

-- 
Russ Allbery (rra@stanford.edu)             <http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/>