Re: Please test autoreconf from zack/autoreconf-exclude branch

On Mon, Mar 9, 2026, at 2:08 PM, Zack Weinberg wrote:
> On Fri, Mar 6, 2026, at 11:05 AM, Ross Burton wrote:
>> diffstat-1.68 fails to autoreconfig with this release.
>
> Applying autoreconf from *any* released version of GNU autoconf to this tarball
> will produce a configure script that doesn't work, or works only by
> luck.

As of commit 4d966682 (just now) GNU autoconf will error out on
this configure.in:

/tmp/diffstat-1.68 $ ~/projects/gnu/autoconf/_build/tests/autoconf
configure.in:86: error: AC_OUTPUT takes at most three arguments.
This configure script cannot be compiled by this version of Autoconf.
configure.in:86: the top level
autom4te: error: /usr/bin/m4 failed with exit status: 1

The defensive measure only covers one of the several places where
Thomas Dickey's forked autoconf diverges from official GNU autoconf
but I hope it will be sufficient to prevent people from wasting a
lot of time trying to figure out why they can't persuade GNU autoconf
to produce a working configure script from this kind of configure.in.

Thomas: I personally would be willing to work with you to see your 
changes and fixes merged back in to official GNU autoconf, to the
extent this is possible (for instance, your @[email protected]
mode would have to be expressed using a new AC_CONFIG_something macro,
as it is far too late to un-deprecate the arguments to AC_OUTPUT).
From what you've written about it, I get the impression you would
rather not be bothered, so I won't bring it up again unless you
tell me you do want to make that happen.

zw