Re: [PATCH] AC_INIT: properly quote package name containing m4 macro

[Stefano Lattarini]

Hello Eric.  Just a clarification, and my 2 cents...

On Thursday 17 March 2011, Eric Blake wrote:
> We have an existing use case that argues for unexpanded (automake's
> desire to write tests for dummy packages that use arbitrary names that
> happen to match m4 builtins that aren't in the m4_ reserved namespace).
>  Seeing existing use cases that argue for expanded, as well as a
> comparison of which camp is larger, will definitely sway which way this
> patch series goes (we may end up instead changing
> _AS_DETECT_BETTER_SHELL to expand, and to tell automake to fix their
> testsuite to avoid the issue of naming a package with an m4 builtin).
>
Automake has already fixed its testsuite in this regard, because it wants
to remain compatible with all autoconf versions back to 2.62; moreover,
the failure we encountered was spurious anyaway -- i.e., the name of the
dummy package wasn't really important, thus we simply changed it to avoid
triggering the autoconf "bug".

So, even if I personally prefer the new behaviour your patch implements,
the Automake testsuite is *not* a real use case for it.

On the other hand, what if a new project wants to name itself 'GNU index'
or 'GNU eval'?  The current autoconf implementation would prevent it to
do so, unless it uses an extra level of quoting:
  AC_INIT([[GNU eval]], [1.0])
But then, would autoconf really handle these extra quotes gracefully
in all its codebase?

Regards,
  Stefano