Well, it _has_ been 3 years. If the backward-compatibility gorp is causing real problems, perhaps it's time to bite the bullet and drop it, something like the following. This won't affect coreutils or diffutils or tar or any modernish program. What would it hurt?
diff --git a/NEWS b/NEWS index adb0163..0261c13 100644 --- a/NEWS +++ b/NEWS @@ -6,6 +6,8 @@ User visible incompatible changes Date Modules Changes +2007-12-22 alloca-opt No longer defines HAVE_ALLOCA_H. + 2007-12-03 getpagesize The include file is changed from "getpagesize.h" to <unistd.h>. diff --git a/m4/alloca.m4 b/m4/alloca.m4 index eb62e0e..95f54a6 100644 --- a/m4/alloca.m4 +++ b/m4/alloca.m4 @@ -1,5 +1,5 @@ -# alloca.m4 serial 7 -dnl Copyright (C) 2002-2004, 2006 Free Software Foundation, Inc. +# alloca.m4 serial 8 +dnl Copyright (C) 2002-2004, 2006, 2007 Free Software Foundation, Inc. dnl This file is free software; the Free Software Foundation dnl gives unlimited permission to copy and/or distribute it, dnl with or without modifications, as long as this notice is preserved. @@ -39,10 +39,6 @@ AC_DEFUN([gl_FUNC_ALLOCA], ALLOCA_H=alloca.h fi AC_SUBST([ALLOCA_H]) - - AC_DEFINE(HAVE_ALLOCA_H, 1, - [Define HAVE_ALLOCA_H for backward compatibility with older code - that includes <alloca.h> only if HAVE_ALLOCA_H is defined.]) ]) # Prerequisites of lib/alloca.c.