[python-committers] autoconf 2.70

[Ned Deily]

On Jul 22, 2016, at 09:01, Xavier de Gaye <xdegaye at gmail.com> wrote:
> It seems that the configure file on the default branch has been generated with
> autoconf 2.70. Autoconf 2.70 has not yet been released [1].  The differences
> between the generated configure files with 2.69 and 2.70 are a few lines [3]
> added by 2.70 with 'runstatedir' in them.  The last old discussion on the
> usage of different autoconf versions [2] does not really answer the following
> question:
> 
> I am using 2.69, should a commit that changes configure.ac respects the
> existing 'runstatedir' lines added by a previous commit or uses directly the
> configure file generated by 2.69 ?

It looks like Matthias used a 2.70 for this commit:

https://hg.python.org/cpython/rev/78d2cb7f66b6

thus probably inadvertently introducing the unused "runstatedir" stuff.

Since 2.69 is the current version, it's fine to "auto-remove" them.

IIRC, some years ago when autoconf was releasing more often and there were multiple versions in use, we had a test in configure.ac to ensure that a particular version of autoconf was being used.  That doesn't seem to be necessary but it's something to keep in mind if we do start seeing on-going problems with autoconf churn.

--
  Ned Deily
  nad at python.org -- []