On 11/07/2012 04:41 PM, Paul Eggert wrote: > On 11/07/2012 04:37 AM, Stefano Lattarini wrote: >> I want to be able to assume the make recipes >> are run by a POSIX shell. > > Thanks. > > Are all the features you're testing for specified by > POSIX 1003.2-1992? (That is, are they all suitably *old* POSIX?) > I'm not really sure: I only looked at the last standard available online on the Austing Group site:
<http://pubs.opengroup.org/onlinepubs/009695399/utilities/xcu_chap02.html> In any case, the features required seem common and simple enough, and I'd rather start aiming a little high, and then lower our expectations if we hit a real-world shell that doesn't support all the features we are testing (this way we can also keep explicit track, in the documentation or VCS history, of the rationale for which we aren't using them -- an aspect where the current Autoconf codebase is sorely lacking unfortunately). I see little point in deliberately wanting to support a 20 years old standard where we can support a 9 years old one without any foreseeable real loss of real loss of portability. > If so, these patches look good, except that > the documentation needs to be updated (it should mention > the POSIX version, for example) > Yes; this should go in the commit message as well. > and a NEWS item needs to be added. > > Do we need to bother with a new branch? I'd say > that this is pretty much ready for the master, modulo > the documentation fixes. > I'd like not to push in master stuff that is only lightly tested and not yet agreed upon by all the developers in master. Giving it some time to cook in a another branch (which I'll try out in combination with a new related Automake branch) seems safer, and likely will also produce a clearer and more informative history. But if you all vote for this to go directly into master, that's fine with me. Thanks, Stefano
