It's not very important to support the latest autoconf since it isn't used when a source dist is compiled. It's more important that we (the developers) use whatever autoconf versions that suit us, and agree about it.
Yup I agree... Excepted I cannot use generated source in FreeBSD now... The configure script fail miserably.... Dunno why... But redoing a ./run_autoconf fixes the problem for me.
Besides, from what I've gathered things have been changing incompatibly between almost every minor release of autoconf lately. If that's correct then I don't think it's worthwhile to try to support it until it has settled again. Then we can port all the m4 code to it and simply drop support for 2.13.
I really like that anyway. Autoconf 2.13 is not standard in all opensource based systems (linux, *bsd, darwin...) and current autoconf code doesn't generate anything on all systems I use.
So to work I have to do the work... copy it to my slow netra X1, wait 20minutes to ./run_autoconf finish it work.... It is really pain in the ass...
BTW Autoconf 2.54 works like a charm with autoconf 2.5x files now.
It is a shame that 2.5x doesn't support well 2.13 files... but we have to thanks some Epita school people for that...
So maybe to help developpers to work, droping 2.13 compat should help us...
/Xavier