[Python-Dev] Updating to autoconf 2.5x (original) (raw)

Guido van Rossum guido@python.org
Thu, 04 Apr 2002 11:47:47 -0500

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 ACPREREQ 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? ACPREREQ?). If there is interest, I can post instructions on how to install both versions side-by-side. So what do you think? Regards, Martin

No problem from me. autoconf 2.50 works perfectly for me. But when I downloaded and installed autoconf 2.53, this is what I got when I ran it:

$ autoconf
configure.in:1062: error: do not use LIBOBJS directly, use AC_LIBOBJ (see section `AC_LIBOBJ vs. LIBOBJS'

Autoheader gives me a bunch of new warnings:

$ autoheader WARNING: Using auxiliary files such as acconfig.h', config.h.bot' WARNING: and config.h.top', to define templates for config.h.in' WARNING: is deprecated and discouraged.

WARNING: Using the third argument of AC_DEFINE' and WARNING: AC_DEFINE_UNQUOTED' allows to define a template without WARNING: `acconfig.h':

WARNING: AC_DEFINE([NEED_MAIN], 1, WARNING: [Define if a function `main' is needed.])

WARNING: More sophisticated templates can also be produced, see the WARNING: documentation. autoheader: `pyconfig.h.in' is updated

Should we stick with 2.50, or make configure.in compatible with 2.53?

I do think that we should agree on using the same version of autoconf, to prevent huge massive changes to the configure script each time someone with a different version regenerates it.

--Guido van Rossum (home page: http://www.python.org/~guido/)