[Freeciv-Dev] autoconf2.52 woes

["Per I. Mathisen" <Per.Inge.Mathisen@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

From several reports and my own frustrating experiences, I'll have to
conclude that there is something seriously wrong with the autoconf2.52
support. Seemingly random errors crop up that are almost impossible to
trace back to some meaningful origin. The only solution is to either run
"make maintainer-clean" or delete the tree and checkout clean.

I don't know why. I have a suspect in acconfig.c, because there are a some
entries there that are not in any AC_DEFINES and that might be interpreted
erronously, but I haven't been able to fix it yet.

I have another theory that this error only appears in trees where you have
gone from using autoconf 2.13 to autoconf 2.52 without doing a "make
maintainer-clean" (maybe just "make clean" works too) in between.

Side note: I am more and more disappointed by autoconf. It seems to have
grown from a despicable collection of kludgey shell scripts into a
godzilla monster of unreadable m4 macros generating shell scripts
generating other shell scripts, cache directories, cache files, auxiliary
files and whatnot. It is impossible to keep track of what it really does
anymore.

Frustrating. But if we can't fix it, we'll have to pull autoconf2.52
support out again.

Yours,
Per

"Humanity´s first sin was faith; the first virtue was doubt."