On Fri, Mar 13, 2020 at 11:31 AM Zack Weinberg <za...@panix.com> wrote: > FYI, I grepped the whole autoconf source tree and I didn't find any > other uses of $as_echo. However, there is one use in > libtool/tests/testsuite.at and one use in > autoconf-archive/m4/ax_pthread.m4. I'm going to send patches to both > of those projects, but the use in ax_pthread.m4 makes me think we > might need to provide $as_echo and $as_echo_n for backward > compatibility; people copy stuff out of the autoconf archive and then > don't ever look for updates.
... and there's a use in gnulib-common.m4, and at least a couple of dozen uses directly in various configure.ac's according to https://codesearch.debian.net/search?q=%5C%24as_echo%28%3F%3A_n%29%3F%5Cb+-pkg%3Aautoconf+path%3A.*%2F%28%3F%3Aconfigure%5C.%28%3F%3Aac%7Cin%29%7C%5B%5E%2F%5D%2B%5C.m4%29%24+-path%3A.*%2Fax_pthread%5C.m4%24+-path%3A.*%2Fgnulib-common%5C.m4%24&literal=0 so yeah I think we do need some backward compatibility here and maybe a deprecation warning if we can swing it. zw
