autoconf version for back branches?

Andrew Dunstan wrote:

I see that older back branches are still using version 2.53 of
autoconf, rather than the 2.59 branch we have updated to for 8.1 and
beyond. Does that mean I need to install version 2.53 if I want to
update the config on those branches?

Yes.

If so, fixing the plpython
problem I reported recently seems like too much work.

mkdir tmp
cd tmp
wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.53.tar.bz2
tar xjf autoconf-2.53.tar.bz2
cd autoconf-2.53
./configure --prefix=$(cd .. && pwd)/install
make install

cd .../pgsql
.../tmp/install/bin/autoconf

Not that much work. :)

--
Peter Eisentraut
http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/

Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> writes:

I see that older back branches are still using version 2.53 of autoconf,
rather than the 2.59 branch we have updated to for 8.1 and beyond. Does
that mean I need to install version 2.53 if I want to update the config
on those branches?

Yup. We aren't changing back autoconf versions if we can help it ---
too much risk of breakage.

If so, fixing the plpython problem I reported
recently seems like too much work.

It's not a big problem if you install 'em into private subdirectories,
eg I have autoconf-2.53 installed with --prefix = /usr/local/autoconf-2.53
and do
PATH=/usr/local/autoconf-2.53/bin:$PATH autoconf
when I need to update back-branch configure scripts.

regards, tom lane

Tom Lane wrote:

Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> writes:

I see that older back branches are still using version 2.53 of autoconf,
rather than the 2.59 branch we have updated to for 8.1 and beyond. Does
that mean I need to install version 2.53 if I want to update the config
on those branches?

Yup. We aren't changing back autoconf versions if we can help it ---
too much risk of breakage.

If so, fixing the plpython problem I reported
recently seems like too much work.

It's not a big problem if you install 'em into private subdirectories,
eg I have autoconf-2.53 installed with --prefix = /usr/local/autoconf-2.53
and do
PATH=/usr/local/autoconf-2.53/bin:$PATH autoconf
when I need to update back-branch configure scripts.

Ah! Thanks! What had failed for me was just running with
/path/to/old/autoconf - this one works however. Strange that a config
package can't work out where its own installed files are.

cheers

andrew

Andrew Dunstan <andrew@dunslane.net> writes:

Tom Lane wrote:

I do
PATH=/usr/local/autoconf-2.53/bin:$PATH autoconf
when I need to update back-branch configure scripts.

Ah! Thanks! What had failed for me was just running with
/path/to/old/autoconf - this one works however. Strange that a config
package can't work out where its own installed files are.

I see several different scripts in /usr/local/autoconf-2.53/bin, so
likely the problem is that 'autoconf' just invokes the others as
'scriptname' and doesn't force an absolute path. I'm too lazy to check
if this is still true in latest autoconf, but if so the FSF guys might
accept a bug report. (Or they may have some weird reason why it's a
feature not a bug. But in any case I'd be surprised if they risk making
such a change in obsolete autoconf versions.)

regards, tom lane

Am Montag, 4. September 2006 03:57 schrieb Andrew Dunstan:

Ah! Thanks! What had failed for me was just running with
/path/to/old/autoconf - this one works however. Strange that a config
package can't work out where its own installed files are.

I had that fixed in Autoconf a while back for this very reason. It certainly
works with 2.59 but apparently not in that older version.

--
Peter Eisentraut
http://developer.postgresql.org/~petere/