Akim suggested recently on bison-patches that autoconf include several possible replacement functions and that as part of autoconfiscating a package the files would be added to it (another part of the suggestion was to have the program specify its license and only include files that were compatible with that license).
There are three possible places to do so: the first is autoreconf, the second is automake, the third is a new program (I'll call it autolib). Each one would have pros and cons: 1) The feature might be useful to programs not using Automake. OTOH autoreconf is currently only a driver for other autotools. 2) IIRC, Automake is already tracking AC_LIBSOURCE so it should be the easiest place to add the new feature. OTOH the feature might be useful to programs not using Automake. This is the one I like the least. 3) It is the biggest task to write Autolib, and also the slowest since it means invocating Autom4te once more. OTOH I think this is the cleanest solution (and besides, one would probably want to invoke Autolib every now and then, for example when he added a new AC_REPLACE_FUNCS call). It comes to mind that Autolib could also add COPYING or COPYING.LIB files to the project. Given the amount of reinventing the wheel when dealing with replaced functions and the (small but consistently present, and boring) work to do to add standard files like getopt* when creating a new package, I think that this would be a really good thing. Any comments (as well as better names for autolib)? Paolo
