[tex-k] Autoconf-2.13 vs. 2.59

[Karl Berry]

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

Right, not impossible.  I know Akim and Alexandre quite well from my
work with GNU.  They're reasonable folks and very experienced at this
stuff.  I hope they'll respond well to a coherent explanation of the
problem and the various solutions we've thought of ...

    I know that gcc and others use makefile
    fragments to be inserted at configure time, 

That's a very good point.  I didn't know that.  (I just tried to look at
the gcc setup to see what it does, but it defeated me.)

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

I just grepped in TeX/texk/* in TeX Live, and it only shows up in
Makefile.in (and documentation).  So unless there are well-hidden uses
lurking out there ...

k