Why autoconf 2.13?

[DJ Delorie]

Fred Fish <fnf@fred.ninemoons.com> writes:
> Is there some reason that gdb is using a 3 year old version of
> autoconf instead of the latest official FSF release (2.53 I think)?

There are problems with autoconf 2.5x reading a config.cache from
2.13.  I haven't heard any word about that being fixed.  Plus, it's a
good idea to support the most recent 2 major releases, and 2.13 is
still in that category.  It's also the autoconf that's preinstalled on
Red Hat Linux 7.2.

We don't automatically start using newer support tools just because
they've been released.  We need a compelling reason to force all the
users to upgrade their machines, and we haven't seen one yet.