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  • Nick Mathewson's avatar
    Try making our configure.ac script build with AC 2.70. · 02816d60
    Nick Mathewson authored
    In versions <=2.69, according to the autoconf docs, AC_PROG_CC_C99
    is needed with some compilers, if they require extra arguments to
    build C99 programs.  In versions >=2.70, AC_PROG_CC checks for these
    compilers automatically, and so the AC_PROG_CC_C99 macro is
    obsolete.
    
    So, what can you do if you want your script to work right with both
    autoconf versions?  IIUC, neither including AC_PROG_CC_C99 macro nor
    leaving it out will give you the right behavior with both versions.
    It looks like you need to look at the autoconf version explicitly.
    
    (Now, the autoconf manual implies that it's "against autoconf
    philosophy" to look at the autoconf version rather than trying the
    behavior to see if it works, but they don't actually tell you how to
    detect recoverably at autoconf-time whether a macro is obsolete or
    not, and I can't find a way to do that.)
    
    So, is it safe to use m4_version_prereq, like I do here?  It isn't
    listed in the autoconf 2.63 manual (which is the oldest version we
    support).  But a mailing list message [1] (which added the
    documentation back in 2008) implies that m4_version_prereq has been
    there since "at least back to autoconf 2.59".
    
    https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf-patches/2008-12/msg00025.html
    
    So I think this will work.
    
    I am basing this patch against Tor 0.3.5 since, if autoconf 2.70
    becomes widespread before 0.3.5 is unsupported, we might need this
    patch to continue 0.3.5 development.  But I don't think we should
    backport farther than 0.4.5 until/unless that actually happens.
    
    This is part of a fix for #40355.
    02816d60