Re: Discrimination

[Francesco Salvestrini]

Hi Reuben,

On Sunday 02 August 2009, you wrote:
> 2009/8/2 Francesco Salvestrini <address@hidden>:
> > On Sunday 02 August 2009, Peter Simons wrote:
> >> Reuben Thomas wrote:
> >> Yes, this is a useful distinction indeed. General-purpose macros like
> >> AX_COMPARE_VERSION lay foundations for other macros to build on, which
> >> means that bugs in those macros tend to affect a lot of other code. It's
> >> a good idea, IMHO, to put those macros under some additional scrutiny.
> >
> > Let us have a regression test suite in place, that would ease the job a
> > lot.
> >
> > I think that it would be better to have the regression test suite up and
> > running before beginning the hack-and-slash fest ...
>
> Let us by all means have a regression test suite, but let us not wait
> for it.

The first proposal is in a separate thread already ... you waited not so much 
after all ;-)

> We can do all sorts of hacking on the head and it won't 
> greatly inconvenience any of us or anyone else, nor will particular
> orderings of the projects suggested so far save much work later, I'd
> suggest.

Yes indeed, a good planning and/or some coordination could save effort IMHO.

Anyway: there's no need to wait after all, let's keep our life simple in order 
to give the archive a better appearance ASAP.

[SNIP]

> > Those one liners come handy in the latter case, even if they are
> > apparently of scarce use for us.
>
> But they don't have to be separate macros, then can be in the docs for
> the relevant macro being called.

[SNIP]

> > But ... do you think that all autoconf users are shell-gurus capable of
> > tracking macros error, quoting sed expression the right way, hacking
> > macros or even using autotools the right way ? I see in the #gnu IRC
> > channel people asking for aclocal/autoconf problems the whole day...
>
> No, it's certainly worth providing simple macros. But it should
> nonetheless be possible to obsolete some of the dumber ones by better
> design. There's a difference between a complicated single line and a
> simple one!

I stated the motivations to my dumber ones before in this thread. I had no 
strong point the time I submitted them and I'm almost undecided today.

I've no time tonight to check all my macros and give help, hints or 
suggestions (which I would be glad to give). I gave a little empiric (really 
empiric, don't blame) check to find those that fall into the category

wc `grep -l salvestrini *.m4`

At a first glance the affected ones should be around 30/40 lines. 
AX_WITH_PERL, AX_WITH_PYTHON, AX_WITH_RUBY and AX_WITH_GUILE are in that 
category for sure. The awk related ones shouldn't be obsoleted.

Francesco

-- 
When does summertime come to Minnesota, you ask?  Well, last year, I
think it was a Tuesday.