[parted-devel] use the latest auto*tools

[Jim Meyering]

Part of an incoming change:

configure.ac:
  -AC_PREREQ(2.50)
  +AC_PREREQ(2.61)

Upstream *developers* of a project like parted has a responsibility to
use the latest stable versions of autoconf, automake, and libtool.
Why, you ask, when your favorite distro doesn't yet distribute
autoconf-2.61 or automake-1.10?

First, note that this is solely a requirement for people who build
from a checked-out copy of the code.  As usual, when building from
a tarball there is no such restriction.

Why use the very latest?  Because your choice of development tool reflects
directly on the portability and robustness of the build tools that end
up in the distribution tarball.  If you use autoconf-2.50, then all
of the portability bugs fixed between 2.50 and 2.61 will be present in
the generated "configure" file included in a parted release.  Likewise,
if you use automake-1.9.6, you end up distributing build infrastructure
that selects a version of "mkdir -p" that is not thread safe, and that
may fail when building with "make -j2".

Of course, this means that a developer may have to install his/her own
private version of some auto* tools (and/or libtool), but it's not hard.