Re: Requiring grep which supports multiple -e options

[Ralf Wildenhues]

* Eric Blake wrote on Sat, Apr 05, 2008 at 02:27:39PM CEST:
> According to Ralf Wildenhues on 4/5/2008 4:58 AM:
> | No, but we documented for our users that AC_PROG_GREP provides this
> | feature (of searching for such a grep).
> |
> | That would be backwards incompatible, no?  Also, it seems kind of
> | arbitrary to relax requirements here, while we make other macros
> | stricter in requiring standards conformance (gnulib is even much more
> | extreme in this case).
>
> Which means we can't change AC_PROG_GREP, but we can add
> AC_PROG_GREP_SIMPLE which guarantees only a grep that meets the simpler
> set of requirements.  Then we can reformulate AC_EGREP_CPP (and thus
> AC_CHECK_HEADER) in terms of AC_PROG_GREP_SIMPLE (since that is documented
> to only search a single pattern), but users who still need multiple -e for
> other reasons can use AC_PROG_GREP.

Sure.  But since AC_PROG_GREP_SIMPLE may then be pulled in by AC_REQUIRE
almost everywhere, you have a problem wrt. allowing user override with
$GREP and so.  Solvable, but at least a bit tricky.

But hey, until there's a patch to discuss, that's all just me babbling.

Cheers,
Ralf