Subject: Re: Automake 1.5
From: James Youngman <[email-masked]>
To: Charles Wilson <[email-masked]>
Cc: Ronald Landheer <[email-masked]>, [email-masked]
Date: 10 Sep 2001 18:27:19 +0100

Charles Wilson <[email-masked]> writes:

> James Youngman wrote:
> 
> 
> >>Thus, Automake 1.5 broke my bootstrap script and does not allow me
> >>to compile Eleanor without problems any more. My questions are:
> >>
> > I have also had to downgrade this stuff, becuase the latest version
> > of
> > autoconf insists on using config.sub even if all you want to do is
> > figure out the value of EXEHDR.  Previous versions of autoconf didn't
> > require that. The problem is that the current version of automake
> > doesn't know to include config.sub even though autoconf needs it :-(
> 
> 
> Okay, I'd like for somebody to explain this to me.  

[...]

> Now, in both cases there are a few backwards-incompatibilities.  Thus,
> projects that use the autotools will require some changes in order to
> work with the new versions.  So why is the first response always to
> downgrade back to the old, obsolete versions of the autotools --
> instead of patching the project to use the new autotools (or better,
> patching the project with compatibility macros to support both 2.13
> and 2.52(autoconf))
> 
> I even submitted patches for libiberty to support both versions, but
> it was more or less ignored.  It seems the response was "we're
> sticking with 2.13"
> 
> What?  Forever?
> 
> I don't understand.  Help me?

The problem (for me) is not that I refuse to upgrade to either; it's
that the two versions are _incompatible_; automake is supposed to
supply those dependencies that it produces (e.g. install-sh, missing,
etc.) and that autoconf produces (e.g. config.sub).  It's that with
these two particular versions, a particular autoconf macro now
requires a file which automake usually does provide, but automake
doesn't know about the dependency.  

This means that for me, there is a temporary workaround of not
upgrading to the latest version of autoconf until automake catches up
with the new situation. 

So, I'm not _permanently_ refusing to upgrade; I'm just deferring an
upgrade to autoconf until I can upgrade automake to a version that's
compatible.   

-- 
James Youngman
Manchester, UK.  +44 161 226 7339
PGP (GPG) key ID for <[email-masked]> is 64A95EE5 (F1B83152).

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