I'm a regular user of both gnulib and autoconf-archive. Using macros from autoconf-archive is fairly straightforward, but it seems to me they could benefit from being merged into gnulib, one ax_foo gnulib module per ax_foo autoconf-archive macro. This would bring the following advantages:
1. No need to find out about autoconf-archive separately from gnulib (or indeed vice versa!). 2. Automatic import of dependencies (autoconf-archive macros would list their dependencies on other autoconf-archive macros, which would be satisfied by gnulib-tool --import as usual). 3. Better documentation: autoconf-archive macros' documentation would be texinfo in the gnulib manual rather than comments in the autoconf files. Easier to read in a variety of formats. 4. No need for the serial number mechanism in autoconf-archive (just use the gnulib commit number, as for gnulib modules). 5. No need to commit autoconf-archive macros to my git repos. I see one disadvantage: the gnulib maintainers might not be happy to give all autoconf-archive maintainers commit access to gnulib. I don't see this as a particularly bad thing: much of autoconf-archive's maintenance is done by a few people who could be added, and it would not hurt to have the quality of a-a jacked up a little. I know I've made several duff commits in the past which probably wouldn't've got past the gnulib maintainers! I don't see initial conversion as being terribly onerous: it's a matter of generating modules (perhaps without dependencies to start with?) and pulling out the documentation (again, optional at first). Licensing shouldn't be a problem: a-a macros are all GPL compatible (many are distributed under an unrestricted license). It would be great to be able to use autoconf-archive as easily as gnulib, and introducing more programmers to gnulib would be a nice side-effect. Thoughts? -- http://rrt.sc3d.org
