Re: automake and 'strict' Perl5

[Tom Tromey <tromey@cygnus.com>]

>>>>> "Rodolphe" == Rodolphe Ortalo <Rodolphe.Ortalo@cert.fr> writes:

Rodolphe> More precisely, I've converted all variables to the 'my'
Rodolphe> convention (ie: lexical variables), introduced prototypes
Rodolphe> for all functions, and I've been able to produce an automake
Rodolphe> script that compiles and run correctly with the 'use
Rodolphe> strict;' directive enabled.

Sounds good.

However, I think there is at least one place where automake exploits
dynamic scoping of `local' -- I agree this is bad, but it is something
we have to deal with before we can apply your patch.

Note that the test suite doesn't even pretend to check all of
automake...

Rodolphe> These modifications surely implies that a developer using
Rodolphe> automake has Perl5 (probably Perl > 5.004), but this is
Rodolphe> probably not a big problem nowadays, no ?

We've already agreed that the next automake can take advantage of Perl
5 features.

Rodolphe> I did these modifications against the 1.4 stable release of
Rodolphe> automake (_not_ against the current development version,
Rodolphe> sorry).  The only file I modified is 'automake.in' (none of
Rodolphe> the m4 macro files were touched of course). But in this
Rodolphe> file, nearly 50% of lines were touched (all variables
Rodolphe> declarations, all function calls, all function
Rodolphe> declarations).

This is somewhat of a problem.

Could you try to apply the patch to the automake from the cvs
repository, and update it?  The cvs version is fairly different
already from the last release.

It would be nice to update aclocal as well.  It is much shorter than
automake.

Also, we will need legal papers from you before we can commit a patch
this large.  Is this going to be a problem?  If you can't get them
signed, there's no point in doing more work on the patch, since I
won't be allowed to apply it.

Tom