[Python-Dev] Updating to autoconf 2.5x

[Martin v. Löwis]

Folks,

autoconf maintainers have advanced autoconf development over the last
few years in slightly incompatible ways; as a result, the have
produced autoconf 2.50 and successors.

The generated autoconf scripts vary largely in their text, and
slightly in their behaviour; autoconf 2.50 offers many additional
features, also, not all configure.in scripts work with autoconf 2.50.

Access to autoconf 2.13 with Linux distributions is becoming a
problem, since some Linux distributors only offer 2.5x packages. So
the question arises whether Python's configure should update to 2.50.

In rev 1.268, I had ported configure.in to support autoconf 2.50, but
have continued to use autoconf 2.13 to regenerate it.

If all regular editors of configure.in have autoconf 2.5x available,
or can install it, I'd propose to bump the AC_PREREQ to 2.50.

For those of you who'd then need both autoconf versions available, I
can recommend the Debian wrapper; this is a perl script that invokes
either autoconf2.13 or autoconf2.50, depending on several criteria
(configure.in or configure.ac? AC_PREREQ?). If there is interest, I
can post instructions on how to install both versions side-by-side.

So what do you think?

Regards,
Martin