Older versions of Autoconf-generated configure scripts suffered extreme slowness related to the creation and deletion of hundreds or thousands of temporary files when run under older shells. The Autoconf documentation says that this problem is typically caused by 'here' documents used inside conditionals, and is exacerbated by the script constantly forking to run commands. This problem used to manifest quite painfully on NextStep and OpenStep (and possibly Rhapsody) with the built-in shell, but it disappeared at some point in the Autoconf 2.5x series of releases, and stayed away even as recently as the 2.57 release. However, the problem has since returned with the most recent Autoconf. Does anyone know which recent change(s) to Autoconf caused this problem to recur so dramatically and painfully? -- ES
