Temporary files == slowness

[Eric Sunshine]

Older versions of Autoconf-generated configure scripts suffered extreme  
slowness related to the creation and deletion of hundreds or thousands of  
temporary files when run under older shells.  The Autoconf documentation says  
that this problem is typically caused by 'here' documents used inside  
conditionals, and is exacerbated by the script constantly forking to run  
commands.

This problem used to manifest quite painfully on NextStep and OpenStep (and  
possibly Rhapsody) with the built-in shell, but it disappeared at some point  
in the Autoconf 2.5x series of releases, and stayed away even as recently as  
the 2.57 release.  However, the problem has since returned with the most  
recent Autoconf.

Does anyone know which recent change(s) to Autoconf caused this problem to  
recur so dramatically and painfully?

-- ES