On Mon, Mar 09, 2026 at 01:14:38PM -0400, Zack Weinberg wrote: > On Wed, Mar 4, 2026, at 6:51 PM, Nick Bowler wrote: > > Why implement a new option for this, instead of using the existing > > environment variables which have been supported by autoreconf > > since 2001? > > Discoverability. If someone's having a problem with autoreconf running > something it shouldn't, and they look at autoreconf --help, the --exclude > option will be right there. The --help text does also mention the > environment variables, but they're described as a way to control *what > command* is run - like, in case you have autopoint somewhere off the default > path - not as a way to control *whether* the commands are run.
I do think the sentence in the Autoconf manual is better than the sentence in the autoreconf --help text, because it actually says what the variables are for: The environment variables AUTOM4TE, AUTOCONF, AUTOHEADER, AUTOMAKE, ACLOCAL, AUTOPOINT, LIBTOOLIZE, INTLTOOLIZE, GTKDOCIZE, M4, and MAKE may be used to override the invocation of the respective tools. Surely it does not need to be explained that the ability to choose the command which is run also includes the ability to choose a command which does nothing. In my opinion having two different, documented methods to achieve exactly the same result just makes things harder to explain, not easier, especially when we're talking about a duplicating a feature that autoreconf has already had for a quarter of a century. Cheers, Nick
