-*- outline -*-

Things it would be nice to maybe do someday:

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* Prevent AC_REQUIRE from interrupting messages.  I have a patch to do this,
but it makes autoconf take 3 times as long to run.

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* Split up AC_SUBST substitutions using a loop to accomodate shells
  with severely limited here document sizes, if it turns out to be a problem.
  I'm not sure whether the limit is on lines or bytes; if bytes, it
  will be less of a problem than it was with the long lines used for
  creating a header file.

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* Look at Jim Avera's code to allow [ and ] in egrep patterns and
AC_DEFINE args.

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* Replace the current ad-hoc macros for Dynix, SCO, ISC, etc.
Perhaps there should be macros for certain functions (statfs, wait) or
classes of functions (POSIX, NIS) that do everything necessary, instead.
Select the right CONFIG_SHELL automatically (Ultrix, Lynx esp.)
Select the right C compiler and POSIX/ANSI C options automatically.

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* Support copying and adding "dir" commands to .gdbinit.

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* Doc: Add index of concepts.

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* Supply a template Makefile.in that people can adapt (what GNU hello
  was going to be).

** Have CC, DEFS, etc. substitutions.

** Support all of the GNU standard targets.

** Parameterize with make variables to require as little modification
as necessary.  Maybe via m4?  (Eww, sounds like imake.)

** Make it usable both with and without a header file.

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* Mike Haertel's suggestions.

** Provide a file containing decls for alloca, strings, etc.  acdecls.h?

** Cross compiling:

*** Error messages include instructions for overriding defaults using
config.site.

*** Distribute a config.site corresponding to a hypothetical bare POSIX system with c89.

*** Cache consistency checking: ignore cache if environment
(CC or PATH) differs.

** Site defaults:

*** Convention for consistency checking of env vars and options in config.site so config.site can print obnoxious messages if it doesn't like options or env vars that users use.

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* autoscan: Tell the files that caused inclusion of each macro,
in a dnl comment.  (Seems to be hard.)

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* Look at user contributed macros: prototypes, IEEE double precision math, 
shared libraries, various other things.

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* Test suite: more things to test:
** That the shell scripts produce correct output on some simple data.
** Configuration header files.  That autoheader does the right thing,
   and so does AC_CONFIG_HEADER when autoconf is run.

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