On Fri, 2025-05-09 at 17:45 -0400, Nikolaos Chatzikonstantinou wrote: > I rewrote GNU m4 in Python. Long story short, I wanted to learn m4 to > fix some issues I had with GNU Guile and Autotools, and after > realizing m4 1.4 is ~8000 lines of code and reading e.g. > <https://www.owlfolio.org/development/autoconf-swot/> which claims > "Feature gaps in GNU M4 hold back development of Autoconf." I thought > I'd rewrite it in Rust. (It turned out to be more beneficial to > rewrite in Python due to faster prototyping for the time being.) > Eventually I plan to get back to my original purpose of fixing the > integration of GNU Guile and Autotools. > > You can find the project home page here, > <https://codeberg.org/annoyingusername/m4p> and you can install with > pip via `pip install m4p`. > > I'm hoping that this is a welcome addition. I'm interested to hear if > m4p works as a GNU m4 replacement for you, and any issues that arise.
FWIW, OpenEmbedded/Yocto Project knows how to cross compile a large chunk of open source software and build functional images from source. It runs autoreconf on most of the software so if you wanted to test this against a large pool of software, it would allow that. I'd be curious on the speed comparison if you do as autoreconf spends most of it's time in m4. Cheers, Richard
