Re: [Valgrind-developers] autoconf

[Nicholas N. <nj...@ca...>]

On Fri, 28 Jan 2005, Robert Walsh wrote:

>>> I'm of the opinion that we should be trying to make our autoconf stuff
>>> as simple as possible to avoid situations like this.  Maybe by choosing
>>> a baseline version (perhaps the version that ships with the earliest
>>> distribution release that we support) and not using any macros that
>>> don't exist in that version?  Or shipping any extra macros above this
>>> that we need.
>>
>> This sounds good to me.
>
> This was the bit where I was hoping someone would just in and say "I'll
> do it!  I know everything about autoconf!" ;-)  I guess I'll take a look
> over the weekend and see what I can see...

Is there much to do?  I guess:

- decide on an acceptable maximal version

- remove the REQUIRE_VERSION(2.59) macro (or whatever it's called)

- remove any macros that don't work in the chosen maximal version
   (was it AS_HELP_STRING?  I think it just concatenates the program name
   to a string, so replace eg:

     AS_HELP_STRING("foo")

   with

     "valgrind: foo"

   or similar)

From then on it's a matter of policy (ie. don't use new macros), rather 
than coding, no?

N