Updating to Autoconf 2.5x

[Zack Weinberg]

As you all know, the configure scripts for GCC, GDB, and binutils must
be generated with autoconf 2.13.  This version of autoconf is now
thoroughly obsolete, to the point where recent releases of popular
free operating systems may not ship it at all.  It is thus becoming
increasingly difficult to maintain these scripts.  Furthermore, using
this old version of autoconf forces us to continue using old versions
of automake and libtool as well.  At the recent GCC summit it was
agreed that we need to make a concerted effort and migrate to autoconf
2.5x.  Exactly how we're going to do that, however, has not yet been
decided.

I have created a mailing list for discussing this issue in detail,
making plans, and implementing them.  All interested parties are
invited to subscribe.  I don't intend this to be a long-lived list;
I hope we can get this conversion done in under a month.

List address:     autoconf-conversion@codesourcery.com
Subscribe:        autoconf-conversion-subscribe@codesourcery.com (ezmlm)
Archives:         http://www.codesourcery.com/archives/autoconf-conversion/maillist.html

zw