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Some dislike of autoconf doc


From: Marc Espie
Subject: Some dislike of autoconf doc
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 16:09:10 +0100
User-agent: Mutt/1.2.5i

>@node Why GNU m4
>@section Why Require GNU M4?
>
>@display
>Why does Autoconf require @sc{gnu} M4?
>@end display
>
>Many M4 implementations have hard-coded limitations on the size and
>number of macros that Autoconf exceeds.  They also lack several
>builtin macros that it would be difficult to get along without in a
>sophisticated application like Autoconf, including:
>
>@example
>m4_builtin
>m4_indir
>m4_bpatsubst
>__file__
>__line__
>@end example

Let's see... OpenBSD m4 does not have any hardcoded limitations, and 
support all these macros, and a few more that have been forgotten.
Note that NetBSD has picked up our changes recently.

>Autoconf requires version 1.4 or above of @sc{gnu} M4 because it uses
>frozen state files.

It's possible to work around that, at least up-to autoconf 2.52...
and frozen state files are not such a big issue for OpenBSD. Our m4
is roughly twice as fast as gnu-m4.

I really would like to make this official at some point.
We've gone to the effort to repair what was broken in our m4 and give
you a second, robust implementation. 

>Since only software maintainers need to use Autoconf, and since @sc{gnu}
>M4 is simple to configure and install, it seems reasonable to require
>@sc{gnu} M4 to be installed also.  Many maintainers of @sc{gnu} and
>other free software already have most of the @sc{gnu} utilities
>installed, since they prefer them.

This is definitely not true. This completely ignores the reality of the
BSD ports system, for instance. This is a somewhat technical community,
where recompiling from source is frequent, and that `free software' tends
to ignore a bit, hence various details don't work out of the box, and
configure scripts frequently need patches. We definitely prefer to patch
the configure.in/ac script, so that the user can play with it some more if
they want... and thus, we frequently need autoconf.

There are a few gnu utilities installed on my box because I prefer them,
quite a few more because *I don't have a choice* (they're required for
some program I like and I didn't have the time to make the program work
with standard POSIX utilities), and I'm quite certain a large portion of
all BSD users feel the same.


Try this:

Since @sc{gnu} M4 is simple to configure and install, and is a small
package, it seems reasonable to require @sc{gnu} M4 to be installed also.  
Some maintainers of @sc{gnu} and other free software already have a large
part of the @sc{gnu} utilities installed for various reasons.




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