Re: [bug-gnulib] uniform #serial number for M4 macros, and `aclocal --install'

[Paul Eggert]

Alexandre Duret-Lutz <address@hidden> writes:

> 1. #serial NNN
> 2. # serial NNN
> 3. # FILENAME serial NNN
> 4. # FILENAME serial NNN (PACKAGES) 
> 5. # FILENAME serial STRING (PACKAGES) 
> ...
> Can someone explains the purpose of these syntaxical elements in
> serial line?  If they are useless, can we remove them (or move
> them on another line)?

Some of them are an attempt to express version forks.  But the whole
area is crufty, and I think they can be removed.

I worry that the serial numbers will cause more problems than they
will cure.  Would it be too much trouble to add an option that is like
"--install", but simply warns you that your .m4 files might be out of
date, without actually installing them?  The basic idea is that it
should be easy to diff the changes before actually installing them.