On Mon, Aug 14, 2006 at 09:40:41PM -0400, Michael Poole wrote: > Wouter Verhelst writes: > > >> In my experience, this is greatly exacerbated and perhaps even > >> primarily due to older versions of autotools encouraging or requiring > >> behavior that later versions of autotools declare to be broken. > > [...] > >> The situation is not helped when these mutually incompatible programs > >> all prefer to be called "automake" or "autoconf" and, on less helpful > >> distributions, do not install themselves as automake-1.9 (etc). > > > > Why should that matter at all? > > > > Autotools are tools for the upstream developer, and have had features to > > declare what version the configure.ac or Makefile.am files are supposed > > to be used with for quite some time now. You distribute a package that > > is already autotooled; the person who compiles the software doesn't need > > autotools. > > > > In case they do, your way of using autotools is horribly broken. > > This means the default operation of automake is horribly broken.
No argument there. I once received a mail from someone who claimed he had argued for doing it this way, and that he regretted that he'd done so. Don't ask me who it was, however; I don't recall. > (See the lengthy comment in > /usr/share/doc/autotools-dev/README.Debian.gz on AM_MAINTAINER_MODE if > its problems slipped your mind.) I would never forget about that issue ;-) > The usual way for people to use version control is to keep the source, > and provide scripts as appropriate to derive the program. Because of > this, it is not common to put aclocal.m4, configure, or the other > generated files into version control. Thus, anyone who downloads > software from version control must run aclocal, autoheader, automake, > autoconf, possibly libtool, etc. This is when backwards incompatible > changes cause problems. If you work with VCS-snapshots, then I don't think it's still fair to consider yourself anything less than "a developer". There will be some rough edges in that case -- not just because of the autotools usage. Proper use of AC_PREREQ and friends will ameliorate this problem, however. -- Fun will now commence -- Seven Of Nine, "Ashes to Ashes", stardate 53679.4 -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
