[Python-Dev] Updating to autoconf 2.5x

[Skip Montanaro]

>>>>> "mal" == mal  <M.-A.> writes:

    mal> 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 I believe 2.50 had serious bugs and was superceded rather quickly by the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.

    mal> Does the update buy us anything ? 

Maybe not.  When I was making daily builds of Gtk2 from CVS a few months
ago, I needed to install autoconf 2.52.  The Gtk folks use features not
available in 2.13.  Martin thinks there are some bug fixes.  The biggest
difference I see is that when I make a change to configure.in, rerun
autoconf, then want to see what the resulting change to configure is, ediff
reports 1355 changes instead of a small handful.  If we have everyone on
different versions of autoconf, configure script checkins are going to be
humongous.  I doubt we'll fill up the CVS disk on SF, but it still seems
like we should move forward as a group when we do, particularly those folks
who edit configure.in most frequently.

I can't comment on glibc versions.  I just go with the flow there...

Skip