[tex-k] Autoconf-2.13 vs. 2.59

[Peter Breitenlohner]

On Sun, 30 Jan 2005, Karl Berry wrote:

This whole issue is for the future; I had sent my mail now because we
certainly need some time to (1) clarify our point of view, (2) maybe get
autoconf enhanced, and (3) adapt to the new situation.

I am glad that I now got some reactions.

>    using the $extrasub that is part of the sed pipeline in the current
>
> Ah, extrasub!  I'd forgotten all about that.  Maybe I wheedled them into
> that.  Like you say, too long ago, and I don't feel like researching my
> old mail archives.  Anyway ...
>
> If we aren't using extrasub any more, we should probably tell them so
> they can remove it.
>
>    following variables are not substituted until after that part of the
>    pipeline:

Ah, I didn't realize that $extrasub was on behalf of TeX. Is it still used.

Olaf,
please note that (contrary to extrasub) the hook I proposed inserts a
separate sed command into the pipeline (in front of all the others). That
is essentially just what the present (modified) autoconf-2.13 does.

> More basic question: can we get away from having to do the
> configure-time file inclusions completely?  Peter, I know your proposed
> mail to autoconf discussed this to some extent, but is it really
> impossible?  ....

That's something we should consider. For web2c/{tex,etex,pdftex,...} the
possibility to have several independently maintained makefile fragments is
certainly very convenient.

> ...  Seems like a difficult job to get a new feature included in
> auto* that no one but us seems to need.

According to what I recently read on the autoconf mailing list maybe
difficult but I think not impossible.

> Maybe we should describe the original problem in more detail to them.
> They might have a cleaner solution.

That's a very good point. In fact I know that gcc and others use makefile
fragments to be inserted at configure time, I think with their own homegrown
method. A cleaner solution for this would be useful for us and for them.

Is it true or not that ac_include is used for makefile fragments only?

regards		pb