Re: [Qemu-trivial] [Qemu-devel] [PATCH] configure: Use $(..) instead of deprecated `..`

[Maciej W. Rozycki]

On Mon, 16 May 2016, Stefan Weil wrote:

> This fixes these warnings from shellcheck:
> 
>     ^-- SC2006: Use $(..) instead of deprecated `..`
> 
> Signed-off-by: Stefan Weil <address@hidden>
> ---
> 
> More warnings from shellcheck for configure and other files
> will be handled by later patches.

 Unlike `..` the $(..) Bourne shell construct is not fully portable, some 
implementations do not recognise it.  Consequently this change potentially 
breaks building QEMU on some systems, possibly in a non-obvious way, as 
there's no explicit check for the presence this feature and a graceful 
failure path included with this patch or the other one AFAICT.  We may or 
may not care about those systems, but still this is a functional 
regression and therefore I think there has to be a good reason for 
introducing it.

 So what's the technical justification -- beyond shutting up some random 
checker tool -- for making this change?  Does the benefit recognised in 
making this change outweigh the limitation introduced?  How about handling 
failures properly?

 NB given the above, and especially because of the introduced functional 
regression mentioned, I don't think this change qualifies as trivial.

  Maciej