[patch #7048] Autoconf macro file for the Google V8 javascript engine

[Peter Simons]

Follow-up Comment #1, patch #7048 (project autoconf-archive):

Hi Graham, 

thank you very much for making the result of your efforts available to
everyone as free software.

There are a few minor issues that should be addressed before AX_LIB_V8 is
included in the Autoconf Archive distribution. Peter Johansson pointed out
<http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf-archive-maintainers/2009-12/msg00014.html>
that Autoconf 2.65 generates a number of warnings when processing your macro
with '-Wall' enabled. He wrote:

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Most of [the warnings] are about obsolete macros such as AC_HELP_STRING and
AC_TRY_COMPILE. IMHO it would be nice if new macros gave no warnings. Many
people are checking the archive to learn how to write macros.

The use of AC_TRY_RUN is more serious. The modern version, AC_RUN_IFELSE,
takes a fifth argument about what to do when cross-compiling. Here, the fifth
argument is left empty, which implies configure will halt with an error
message when cross-compiling. I wonder if that is on purpose.

These are the warnings I get with -Wall:

configure.ac:5: warning: The macro `AC_HELP_STRING' is obsolete.
configure.ac:5: You should run autoupdate.
../../lib/autoconf/general.m4:209: AC_HELP_STRING is expanded from...
v8.m4:28: AX_LIB_V8 is expanded from...
configure.ac:5: the top level
configure.ac:5: warning: The macro `AC_TRY_COMPILE' is obsolete.
configure.ac:5: You should run autoupdate.
../../lib/autoconf/general.m4:2581: AC_TRY_COMPILE is expanded from...
configure.ac:5: warning: The macro `AC_TRY_LINK' is obsolete.
configure.ac:5: You should run autoupdate.
../../lib/autoconf/general.m4:2654: AC_TRY_LINK is expanded from...
configure.ac:5: warning: The macro `AC_TRY_RUN' is obsolete.
configure.ac:5: You should run autoupdate.
../../lib/autoconf/general.m4:2731: AC_TRY_RUN is expanded from...
configure.ac:5: warning: AC_RUN_IFELSE called without default to allow
cross compiling
../../lib/autoconf/general.m4:2715: AC_RUN_IFELSE is expanded from...

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Also, it appears that AX_LIB_V8 includes a lot of intelligence concerned with
comparing version numbers. Is it possible that this code could be simplified a
lot by re-using AX_COMPARE_VERSION?

Take care,
Peter

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