[Python-Dev] Updating to autoconf 2.5x

[Martin v. Loewis]

"M.-A. Lemburg" <mal@lemburg.com> writes:

> Does the update buy us anything ? 

I know of two specific aspects:

- the AC_CHECK_HEADERS in autoconf 2.5x will check the status of the
  compiler invocation, instead of checking the error output. In turn,
  if gcc produces a warning for a system header, autoconf 2.13 will
  conclude that the headers is missing, whereas autoconf 2.5x will
  detect its presence. This, in turn, should fix #535545.

- autoconf 2.5x supports AC_CHECK_DECL. This can help fixing #534108.

> FWIW, Suse 7.2 shipped with autoconf 2.13 and is still a rather
> recent Linux distro.

SuSE 7.3 ships 2.52 only. It is a more recent Linux distribution.

> Side note: I recently found that the socket module is using 
> bleeding edge glibc APIs as well, in fact it was the only
> module that needed the most recent glibc version installed
> on my machine (2.2.1). 

Can you give precise details?

> This may be a marginal problem, but do we really need to
> live on the bleeding edge of C libraries ? And if so, is
> there a way to configure Python to only use, say, glibc 2.2
> APIs (to enhance binary compatibility) ?

It certainly does; if it doesn't, please report a bug.

In any case, Python is not written specifically for glibc; it is
portable across various C libraries.

Regards,
Martin