How can Autoconf help with the transition to stricter compilation defaults?

[Zack Weinberg via cfe-commits]

Wookey <wookey at wookware.org> writes:
> On 2022-11-10 19:08 +0100, Florian Weimer wrote:
>> based on a limited attempt to get this fixed about three years
>> ago, I expect that many of the problematic packages have not had their
>> configure scripts regenerated using autoconf for a decade or more.  This
>> means that as an autoconf maintainer, you unfortunately won't be able to
>> help us much.
>
> We changed the default in debian to re-autoconf on build a few years
> ago precisely so that changes in the tools (particularly new arch
> support) were picked up even by code that was not being re-released or
> released without autofoo updates.  This has worked remarkably well.
>
> So changes in the tools will get used, at least in that context, which
> includes a fairly hefty pile of crufty old code. I have no feeling for
> how many packages are actually affected by this. Is there a quick way to test?

In the run-up to Autoconf 2.70 I got Lucas to do a Debian archive
rebuild and mass bug filing, so, look through Debian packages for
patches being carried for configure.ac and/or bundled .m4 files?

zw