BTW, mandrake 8.2 has autoconf-2.52d preinstalled

[Guido Draheim]

During the cooker developments of mandrake, I noticed they did create
a little script as /usr/bin/autoconf that would look for either
configure.in or configure.ac - if it finds the latter, it will
forward the call to /usr/bin/autoconf-2.5x, otherwise it will use
/usr/bin/autoconf-2.13, where of course each one is the renamed
binary of their respective releases.

While this is a good idea, after switching to 8.2 I wondered why 
some autm4ate files did pop up as I did expect this to be bound 
to 2.53 - and indeed, a call to `autoconf --version` in a directory 
with configure.ac will reveal 2.52d - and not 2.52. Can it be that 
the mandrake guys were accidently using a development version as the 
usage of an alpha-suffix to the last release-version makes one 
intuitivly expect an update/fixedrelease?

Or was that intentional for some reason - may be someone could
enlight me whether autom4te based series and autoconf-2.13
could perhaps share the same datadir tree.

TIA,
-- guido                               
http://freespace.sf.net/guidod