On Tue, Dec 17, 2024, at 12:24 PM, Ross Burton wrote: > On 17 Dec 2024, at 17:17, Nick Bowler <nbowler@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> Adding the automake list, because (mostly for historical reasons) >> aclocal is actually part of automake, not autoconf. > > I’ve been using autotools for too many years and I _still_ forget what > tool is where… Though considering what it does, it really should be > in autoconf, right? Abstractly speaking, it does seem like aclocal should be provided by autoconf. I'm not sure it's worth bothering to move it, though. Within autoconf itself, the only thing that cares about aclocal is autoreconf, which _would_ be a little simpler if it could assume aclocal always exists, but not much. I don't know if there's anything within automake that would get either simpler or more complicated if aclocal were part of autoconf. Broadening the scope of the cleanup to include all the other random third-party tools whose purpose is to make library code available to autoconf -- gettextize, libtoolize, gnulib-tool, etc -- *might* be interesting, but might also just make it too much of a mess to bother with. The other thing that comes to mind is, if there were anyone working seriously on usage of autoconf *without* automake, that would make the move a lot more valuable. I know some people have tried that in the past but I don't think any of them ever got anywhere. I have no comment on the rest of your message. zw
