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(autocf21.info.gz) Deuteronomy

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 14.5 Deuteronomy
 ================
 
 A long wish list for major features had accumulated, and the effect of
 several years of patching by various people had left some residual
 cruft.  In April 1994, while working for Cygnus Support, I began a major
 revision of Autoconf.  I added most of the features of the Cygnus
 `configure' that Autoconf had lacked, largely by adapting the relevant
 parts of Cygnus `configure' with the help of david zuhn and Ken
 Raeburn.  These features include support for using `config.sub',
 `config.guess', `--host', and `--target'; making links to files; and
 running `configure' scripts in subdirectories.  Adding these features
 enabled Ken to convert GNU `as', and Rob Savoye to convert DejaGNU, to
 using Autoconf.
 
    I added more features in response to other peoples' requests.  Many
 people had asked for `configure' scripts to share the results of the
 checks between runs, because (particularly when configuring a large
 source tree, like Cygnus does) they were frustratingly slow.  Mike
 Haertel suggested adding site-specific initialization scripts.  People
 distributing software that had to unpack on MS-DOS asked for a way to
 override the `.in' extension on the file names, which produced file
 names like `config.h.in' containing two dots.  Jim Avera did an
 extensive examination of the problems with quoting in `AC_DEFINE' and
 `AC_SUBST'; his insights led to significant improvements.  Richard
 Stallman asked that compiler output be sent to `config.log' instead of
 `/dev/null', to help people debug the Emacs `configure' script.
 
    I made some other changes because of my dissatisfaction with the
 quality of the program.  I made the messages showing results of the
 checks less ambiguous, always printing a result.  I regularized the
 names of the macros and cleaned up coding style inconsistencies.  I
 added some auxiliary utilities that I had developed to help convert
 source code packages to use Autoconf.  With the help of Franc,ois
 Pinard, I made the macros not interrupt each others' messages.  (That
 feature revealed some performance bottlenecks in GNU `m4', which he
 hastily corrected!)  I reorganized the documentation around problems
 people want to solve.  And I began a testsuite, because experience had
 shown that Autoconf has a pronounced tendency to regress when we change
 it.
 
    Again, several alpha testers gave invaluable feedback, especially
 Franc,ois Pinard, Jim Meyering, Karl Berry, Rob Savoye, Ken Raeburn,
 and Mark Eichin.
 
    Finally, version 2.0 was ready.  And there was much rejoicing.  (And
 I have free time again.  I think.  Yeah, right.)
 
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