>> > AC_DEFINE([DEF(x)], [somevalue]) >> >> Ouch! That's not supported, and I'm surprised you got it to work as >> well as it did. > > status.m4 contains a code which supports this, so until now I had no > idea that this may be deprecated. I think this feature was available > since the beginning of Autoconf.
When you say "this", do you mean AC_DEFINE([DEF(x)], [somevalue]), or do you mean merely putting something like this into config.h.in: #define DEF(x) somevalue and having 'configure' ignore it if DEF is not otherwise affected by substitutions? > I understand that there is no real reason to use this feature, but > OTOH, when we remove it we'll again hear cries that "the Autotools > people are never able to produce a backward compatible release". The old behavior was never documented, so I'm less sympathetic to this argument than I might otherwise be. Would you also support perverse configure.in files like this? They "worked' in Autoconf 2.60 but not 2.61. (In 2.61 this test fails miserably, at autoconf time, with a mismatched m4 macro.) AC_INIT([TEST], [1], [somebody]) AC_DEFINE([DEF(x], [) x]) AC_CONFIG_HEADER([config.h]) AC_OUTPUT > Shouldn't we rather maintain the feature? If it's easy to support the particular test that started this thread, please feel free.
