FESCo Proposal for blocking older version of autoconf & automake

Christopher Aillon caillon at redhat.com
Mon May 5 16:33:56 UTC 2008


On 05/05/2008 12:21 PM, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> On Mon, 2008-05-05 at 12:06 -0400, Christopher Aillon wrote:
>> On 05/05/2008 11:48 AM, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
>>> This step is way over due. It also will teach maintainers not run the
>>> autotools while building.
>> It will also teach maintainers not to use Fedora for doing upstream work.
> 
> How comes you expect each and every tool in Fedora but the autotools to
> be "current".
> 
> We have current compilers, current python, current perl, current ...

New compilers affects what's in the package.  This affects users.
New python affects the behavior of the package.  This affects users.
New perl affects the behavior of the package.  This affects users.

New autotools affects next to nothing.  Only what configure.in and 
Makefile.in look like.  This has zero impact for users.

> But ... you are expecting Fedora to ship and support utterly outdated
> autotools?

I personally don't care what shell scripts are shipped.  That's all they 
are, shell scripts.  They don't ever need to be rebuilt, just be there 
because they are compat packages.  Upstreams expect them to be there, 
and that's reason enough why I think we should continue to ship them.

> You are measuring by double standards - If upstreams were writing proper
> autotool files and where following upstream autotools as they apparently
> are doing wrt. other tools, this issues would not exist.

Or if autotools maintainers would stop changing the interface so 
freaking often, this wouldn't be a problem either....




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