FESCo Proposal for blocking older version of autoconf & automake

[Jeroen van Meeuwen]

Toshio Kuratomi wrote:
> Jeroen van Meeuwen wrote:
>> One could imagine a policy in which new packages using these tools 
>> would not be accepted per-se, while the tools would still be 
>> available, packaged, for those other packages and developers that need 
>> it.
>>
>> Does such, or something similar, make sense?
>>
> No.
> 
> The packager should not have to use the autotools normally.  So during 
> package review, what version of autotools is necessary might not come 
> up.  Only when a problem is discovered that requires changing the 
> configure.in/ac or Makefile.am will the version of autotools start 
> mattering to the packager.
> 

While the "problem" may not be apparent at first, one can tell from any 
configure.in/ac or Makefile.am whether it needs one of the older autofoo 
tools though, right? If so, I can only conclude the reviewer would be 
able to raise this (but, possibly, not block approval?). If not so, 
forget what I said -I'm no guru in autofoo ;-)

BTW... Given your statement:

 > The packager should not have to use the autotools normally.

I "never" *cough* the two packages that I'm upstream for *cough* ship 
any autofoo output files, only autofoo input files; it's excluded from 
the source tree and excluded in tarballs... Should I reconsider this? Is 
it gonna give trouble at some point?

Kind regards,

Jeroen van Meeuwen
-kanarip