Re: Autoconf with Debian patches

[Guy Harris via tcpdump-workers <tcpdump-workers () lists tcpdump org>]

> --- Begin Message ---
>
>
> From: Guy Harris <gharris () sonic net>
>
> Date: Sun, 8 Jan 2023 10:56:48 -0800
>
> On Jan 8, 2023, at 5:24 AM, Denis Ovsienko <denis () ovsienko info> wrote:
>
> > Thank you for this information.  Let me add that Ubuntu 20.04 defaults
> > to 2.69, but Ubuntu 22.04, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD and OmniOS all
> > currently default to Autoconf 2.71.
>
> ...and macOS doesn't ship with autoconf in the first place, so the user would have to install a third-party version.
>
> The current GNU release is 2.71, and the current Homebrew release:
>
>         https://formulae.brew.sh/formula/autoconf#default
>
> is 2.71, so...
>
> > Would it make the most sense to make 2.71 the nominal version (especially for releases), but to maintain
> > backward compatibility with 2.69 for quite a while longer?
>
> ...yes.
>
> That means people should be careful when updating the configure script, and might call for at least one part of the CI 
> process involve testing, on a machine with 2.69 installed, both "does it work if you just use the packaged configure 
> script?" and "does it work if you get rid of configure and config.h.in, run autoconf to generate the script with 2.69, 
> and use the resulting configure script?", to catch cases where people aren't careful.
>
> --- End Message ---
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