should we change "unknown" to $GID & $UID respectively ? I guess it couldn't hurt, although I doubt it makes any difference in practice.
if test $am_uid = "unknown"; then Don't we usually avoid quoting constant strings? I.e.: if test "$am_uid" = unknown; then AC_MSG_WARN([ancient id detected; assuming current UID is ok, but dist-ustar might not work]) "Might"? Either it works or it doesn't? Anyway, who ever uses ustar? Never seen it. Anyway, seems like such a warning "might" be useful when producing an archive with automake (running make dist), but not when running configure. When merely doing "./configure && make", ustar is irrelevant. Anyway #2, I think the chances of someone wanting to produce a ustar archive on a system with old id is zero. Thus I suggest just fixing the syntax stuff and letting it go at that. the point of the checks isn't just to annoy the user. No :)? That's what it seems like. Helpful to the package developer; annoyance to the configure user. -k