wish list (was: skipping parallel autotest tests)

[Eric Blake]

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According to Paolo Bonzini on 3/30/2009 10:26 AM:
> Eric Blake wrote:
>> I'm interested in getting a beta-quality 2.64 release out the door soon.
>> There are still known issues (primarily coverage of parallel autotest, but
>> also a growing backlog of suggested improvements in my inbox) that prevent
>> this from being a stable release.
> 
> Can you summarize these improvements?  Otherwise, parallel autotest can
> be deemed experimental and not prevent the release to be considered stable.

Here's links to several issues that I have kept flagged in my inbox, but
which have not been high enough priority for me to attempt any patches.  I
personally don't think any of them are worth holding up the release of
beta 2.64, but would like to address some of them before declaring a
stable 2.65 (or 3.0?) release.

Detect cygwin's poor named fifo behavior in parallel autotest:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf-patches/2008-10/msg00008.html

See if m4_require can be improved to support arguments:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf/2008-10/msg00057.html

Document and support a safe replacement for the dangerous undocumented
AC_TRY_EVAL:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf/2008-11/msg00004.html

Improve AS_INIT_GENERATED to use diversion magic to minimize
initialization time of child script:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf-patches/2008-10/msg00281.html

Improve semantics of CONFIG_SHELL:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf-patches/2008-11/msg00073.html

Ensure sed replacement of $LINENO doesn't cause invalid script:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf-patches/2008-10/msg00348.html

Double-check that zsh is always in sh mode:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf-patches/2008-11/msg00116.html

Improve documentation of AT_CHECK, and provide a non-logging option for
binary or large expected outputs:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf/2008-11/msg00047.html

Fix AC_LANG_FUNC_LINK_TRY(C) for ICC 10.1:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-autoconf/2008-12/msg00030.html

Fix AC_PROG_CXX to not default to g++ when no C++ compiler is present:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-autoconf/2009-03/msg00010.html

Improve AS_ESCAPE implementation:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf-patches/2009-03/msg00009.html

Provide way to silence (cached) messages:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-autoconf/2009-02/msg00028.html
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf-patches/2009-03/msg00010.html

Improve documentation on AC_PROG_CC_C99:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-autoconf/2009-03/msg00049.html

Figure out what to do about overquoting in AC_EGREP_CPP:
http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf/2009-03/msg00101.html

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

Eric Blake             address@hidden
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