Re: Better error message for aclocal.m4 mismatch

[Ralf Wildenhues]

* Alexandre Duret-Lutz wrote on Sat, Oct 14, 2006 at 04:03:33PM CEST:
> >>> "RW" == Ralf Wildenhues <address@hidden> writes:
> 
>  RW> I'm pretty sure users will be confused about this error message --
>  RW> I even was.  I think the one below would be a bit better.

> I'm wary of suggesting to run `aclocal' as some people will feel
> compelled to run it as-is, without the necessary -I, and then
> send us hate mails.

Yes, that's not a good outcome.

> ISTR you complained against gettextize for something similar some days
> ago.

Yes.  I hope you didn't mean to imply that that was a hate mail.

> Personally I'd love to be able
> to suggest autoreconf, but its use is unfortunately not universal.

Yep.  :-/

> How about something like this:
> 
> aclocal.m4:17: error: this file was generated for autoconf 2.60.
> You have another version of autoconf.  If you want to use that, you
> should regenerate the build system entirely.
> aclocal.m4:17: the top level

Yeah, I guess that's good enough.  I've just used that and applied it.

> and we let the user choose its preferred course for regen?

Well, it may still generate maintenance traffic, but I guess that's
difficult to avoid.  (And if not for that message, then the same
question arises in other circumstances.)

> Or was there another source of confusion you were trying to address?

Nope.

Cheers,
Ralf