Re: Debian-specific Autoconf patches

[Ralf Wildenhues]

Hi Paul,

* Paul Eggert wrote on Wed, May 31, 2006 at 03:33:53AM CEST:
> Ralf Wildenhues <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> > let's just revert all these changes, so we can release 2.60 without
> > headaches;
> 
> I installed the following patch, which should fix all the headaches
> reported so far in this area (and thanks for reporting them).  This
> isn't the same as reverting all these changes, but it's getting
> closer.  We're going to have headaches no matter what, as far as this
> quoting issue goes;

I don't understand.  I didn't have any such headaches before the patch.
So, it seems to me, the situation before the patch was ok.

> I don't yet see why the currently-installed changes make things worse.

With all due respect, I am slowly running out of time checking whether
the new version now breaks oodles of packages, or not.  I *know* the
version from the first related patch before 2006-05-26 worked decently
with all those packages -- so why are we not simply taking that?  (Yes,
even iff technically all the packages are at fault, and not Autoconf.
I've barely scratched that surface of probably million lines of legacy
Autoconf code.)

Respectfully,
Ralf

> 2006-05-30  Paul Eggert  <address@hidden>
> 
>       * lib/autoconf/general.m4 (_AC_DO_ECHO): Be more conservative
>       about quoting ac_try: quote all of it, if any of it seems suspicious.
>       This means we don't have to worry about ${ or sed any more.
>       Also, double-quote the case statement, to work around misuses via
>       underquoting as reported by Ralf Wildenhues in
>       
> <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf-patches/2006-05/msg00169.html>.
>       (_AC_EVAL_STDERR): Revert, since evidently some packages rely on this
>       undocumented and dangerous macro.
>       Problem reported by Ralf Wildenhues in
>       
> <http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf-patches/2006-05/msg00168.html>.