[Python-Dev] Updating to autoconf 2.5x

[M.-A. Lemburg]

Skip Montanaro wrote:
> 
>     Martin> If all regular editors of configure.in have autoconf 2.5x
>     Martin> available, or can install it, I'd propose to bump the AC_PREREQ
>     Martin> to 2.50.
> 
> I believe 2.50 had serious bugs and was superceded rather quickly by the
> autoconf maintainers.  I would vote to boost to 2.52 or above.

Does the update buy us anything ? 

FWIW, Suse 7.2 shipped with autoconf 2.13 and is still a rather 
recent Linux distro.

Side note: I recently found that the socket module is using 
bleeding edge glibc APIs as well, in fact it was the only
module that needed the most recent glibc version installed
on my machine (2.2.1). 

All other modules were happy with plain glibc 2.2. I found 
out about this when installing an application on RedHat which 
didn't have glibc 2.2.1 installed.

This may be a marginal problem, but do we really need to
live on the bleeding edge of C libraries ? And if so, is
there a way to configure Python to only use, say, glibc 2.2
APIs (to enhance binary compatibility) ?

-- 
Marc-Andre Lemburg
CEO eGenix.com Software GmbH
______________________________________________________________________
Company & Consulting:                           http://www.egenix.com/
Python Software:                   http://www.egenix.com/files/python/