Re: Writing New Macros

[Eric Blake]

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According to Eric Lemings on 4/10/2007 9:07 AM:
>>> (Possibly the same as _AC_TYPE_CHECK_NEW without any 
>> includes at all.)
>>
>> Don't use undocumented autoconf internals (unless you are 
>> writing a patch
>> for autoconf itself).  The _AC namespace is reserved, and should not
>> appear in your configure.ac.
> 
> It wouldn't.  I'm writing custom M4 macros that would appear in the
> configure.ac and calls to the reserved _AC namespace would appear in
> these custom macros.  Nothing wrong with that right?  :P

There is indeed something wrong with it.  What does it take to convince
people that by using undocumented interfaces from reserved namespaces that
they are setting themselves up for hard-to-debug failures in the future
when the undocumented interface goes away or slightly changes in
semantics, as is the right of the package maintainers by the very nature
that they chose not to document it?  If you really need the functionality,
and a documented API doesn't provide it, then write a bug report against
autoconf suggesting that a public API be provided that does the same
thing, and the testsuite augmented to guarantee stability of the
interface.  The moral of the story is:

_Don't use macros in the _AC* namespace if you are not writing a patch for
Autoconf itself!!!_

- --
Don't work too hard, make some time for fun as well!

Eric Blake             address@hidden
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