On Wed, 12 May 1999, Greg A. Woods wrote:

: The problem there is that if anyone ever does need to patch the
: "configure.in" file for some other reason then it's rather hairy
: sometimes to figure out just what the "configure" patch was doing, not
: to mention somewhat messy to undo.
: 
: Never patch generated code if you can help it, even if it's human
: readable stuff.

However, it's unwritten policy to patch the configure script if you need to
`if-bracket' something.  In other circumstances, we patch both configure.in
and configure (in that order), where the configure patch is the changed
portion of the regenerated script.  We SHOULD NOT add dependencies on
autoconf, as that adds even more hidden dependencies (...not everyone wants
perl just to build a couple small pkgs).

-- 
-- Todd Vierling (Personal tv@pobox.com; Bus. todd_vierling@xn.xerox.com)