configuring /var/run with newer autoconf

[Joseph Myers]

On Thu, 7 Apr 2016, Łukasz Stelmach wrote:

> Hi,
> 
> TL;DR Is there a chance a patch requiring autconf 2.70 is going to be
>       accepted?

I don't think it's appropriate to require unreleased versions of external 
packages.  A proposal to use autoconf 2.70 should wait until it's been 
released.  (And until it's widely present in GNU/Linux distributions I 
think pretty strong justification would be needed to use it, even after 
it's been released.)

I'm also doubtful that making the /var/run path configurable is an 
appropriate change at all.  This path appears in _PATH_VARRUN in 
sysdeps/unix/sysv/linux/paths.h, an installed header.  In general it's 
best for installed headers to depend only on the (architecture, OS) pair 
(with architecture being interpreted so that e.g. 32-bit and 64-bit get 
the same headers), not on other configuration variants.  If there is 
consensus on /run being the right path on GNU/Linux, then the change 
should simply be made unconditionally (with appropriate documentation in 
NEWS).

-- 
Joseph S. Myers
joseph@codesourcery.com