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Upgrade to GNU Autoconf 2.72 #115765
Description
Feature or enhancement
Autoconf 2.72 was released 2023-12-22. Relevant highlights (some C&P verbatim) from the release announcement:
- Pre-C89 compilers are no longer supported. This should not be a problem for us, as we're using C11.
AC_USE_SYSTEM_EXTENSIONSnow enables C23 Annex F extensions
by defining__STDC_WANT_IEC_60559_EXT__(is this a problem?)Autoconf now quotes<= not worth the churn'like this'instead of`like this'; perhaps we should clean up our quoting in a separate first, so the 2.72 change is easier to review.- Improved compatibility with a wide variety of systems and tools
including CheriBSD, Darwin (macOS), GNU Guix, OS/2, z/OS, Bash 5.2,
the BusyBox shell and utilities, Clang/LLVM version 16, the upcoming
GCC version 14, etc.
The other version requirements (Perl, M4, etc.) should not affect us.
Preliminary actions:
- gh-115765: Use AX_CHECK_DEFINE instead of AC_EGREP_* #116016
- gh-115765: Don't use deprecated AC_CHECK_TYPE macro in configure.ac #115792
Activity
erlend-aasland commentedon Feb 21, 2024
The
AC_CHECK_TYPEissue was addressed previously: #89886 (comment)erlend-aasland commentedon Feb 21, 2024
cc. @corona10
erlend-aasland commentedon Feb 21, 2024
Seems our usage of
AC_EGREP_*()is pretty safe, so it is not imperative to replace them with more modern equivalents.erlend-aasland commentedon Feb 21, 2024
Well, the
AC_EGREP_HEADERusage is not very clean. We should fix that.pythongh-115765: Don't use deprecated AC_CHECK_TYPE macro in configur…
gh-115765: Don't use deprecated AC_CHECK_TYPE macro in configure.ac (#…
[3.12] pythongh-115765: Don't use deprecated AC_CHECK_TYPE macro in c…
pythongh-115765: Use AX_CHECK_DEFINE instead of AC_EGREP_*
pythongh-115765: Use AX_CHECK_DEFINE instead of AC_EGREP_*
gh-115765: Don't use deprecated AC_EGREP_* macros in configure.ac (#1…
erlend-aasland commentedon Feb 29, 2024
Preparations for GNU Autoconf 2.72 have landed. It looks like Ubuntu 24.04 will ship with GNU Autoconf 2.71, though. @corona10, what do you think of switching to an autoconf docker/podman image again?
corona10 commentedon Mar 1, 2024
@erlend-aasland
see https://github.com/corona10/cpython_autoconf/blob/main/.github/workflows/manifest-build-push.yml
21 remaining items
pythongh-115765: Upgrade to GNU Autoconf 2.72 (python#128411)
erlend-aasland commentedon Jan 4, 2025
I forgot some doc and
configure.acupdates; reopening.pythongh-115765: Document and enforce Autoconf 2.72 requirement
gh-115765: Document and enforce Autoconf 2.72 requirement (#128502)
pythongh-115765: Document and enforce Autoconf 2.72 requirement (pyth…
asottile commentedon Jan 8, 2025
so a bit annoyingly this now means that one cannot autoconf on the most popular linux distribution's most recent lts release (which isn't even that old) ubuntu 24.04 which ships with autoconf 2.71
this makes it difficult to package for deadsnakes as well -- I'm hoping to just patch out the autoconf version requirement and continue on as usual. it doesn't seem to actually need the most recent version?
pythongh-115765: Upgrade to GNU Autoconf 2.72 (python#128411)
pythongh-115765: Document and enforce Autoconf 2.72 requirement (pyth…
befeleme commentedon Jan 15, 2025
Fedora 40, which is still a supported version, is also affected the same way (autoconf 2.71 still there).
@asottile, were you successful with patching out the autoconf version?
pythongh-115765: Don't use deprecated AC_CHECK_TYPE macro in configur…
lazka commentedon Jan 24, 2026
I'm also facing the same problem with Ubuntu 24.04. I've patched out the version and things seem to work fine with 2.71.