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

On Tue, Mar 03, 2026 at 12:20:32PM -0500, Zack Weinberg wrote:
> The last thing I want to squeeze into autoconf 2.73 is a new autoreconf
> feature, an option --exclude that can be used to tell autoreconf not to
> run particular tools even if its heuristics say they are necessary.  We
> had a lot of problems in the past few cycles with autoreconf running
> auxiliary tools when people didn't want it to, so I'm hoping this
> provides a self-help option for future issues along those lines.

Why implement a new option for this, instead of using the existing
environment variables which have been supported by autoreconf since
2001?

For example, to skip running autoheader, you can just do:

  AUTOHEADER=: autoreconf

Cheers,
  Nick