prefix / Re: Masterplan

[Guido Draheim]

I've had a quick look over the masterplan, hmm,
I'll try to add my 2 cent here - everything just
food for discussion.

>     *
>
>       Should we enforce a policy on the macro names?
>
>       Do we enforce the "aca_" prefix? The "ac_" prefix? 
>       Anything but the "ac_" prefix? No rules at all?

I was about to promote the usage of "AX_" to be reserved
for the ac-archive - speak as "autoconf extension". (some
doc about it is up at sourceforge since december). - I had
it always on my mind to submit a patch for `aclocal` and/or
`autoconf` so it understands `AX_` as well and warns the
user about unresolved such symbols.

Using the AC_ symbol is not good - the reason is two-fold
(well, _atleast_ two-fold *g*)
(a) we do not really have control over the way that the
    autoconf people pick names, and many submitters are
    not aware of traditions. Conflicting names are quite
    probable.
(b) I do envision that some macros will travel from the
    ac-archive into the autoconf main package. That
    could lead to name-clashes in a real project - one
    is a copy from ac-archive (perhaps laid down locally
    in some acinclude.m4) and the other from the
    autoconf or aclocal /usr/share directories. Which
    one is taken?

The reason to keep the prefix close to the AC_ prefix:
(a) the inverse of (b): some submitter simply extends a
    macro otherwise found in the autoconf main package,
    and perhaps wants it to travel back as soon as
    possible but it was not accepted as is even that it
    is useful for him. The name should not be tooo far
    away from the original
(b) people who do not know about the ac-archive will
    implicitly detect that "AX_" might have something
    to with the official gnu autoconf project and come
    there to have a look. The current autoconf sources
    reservere also symbols like "AS_" and "AH_", so it
    is seen as natural to associate something close
    with a gnu project.

The only thing is to negotiate such a short prefix with
the autoconf project maintainers to reserve it for the
usage in the ac-archive. There was a discussion about
just that a (long) while ago, and "AX_" had been seen
as a good candidate back then.

Reserving it for the ac-archive gives a bit of credit
for the submitter - but it also needs the repository
maintainer to check with his mind about naming rules
of macros, so that all the "AX_" macros do follow a
certain scheme - probably derived from the traditions
out of the autoconf project.

wdyt, cheers, guido