Re: [Cooker] Re: [Maintainers] A plan for automake

[Frederic Crozat]

On Wed, 18 May 2005 16:49:43 +0200, Guillaume Rousse wrote:

> Frederic Crozat wrote:

>>>>>Anyway, let's first see how much difficult it is to get rid of current
>>>>>actual use of automake 1.7 before taking such hypothetical case in
>>>>>consideration. Using an automatic rebuilder as suggested should allow
>>>>>to evaluate this.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>So, you'll take care of fixing packages in the future which will not
>>>>build with new version of automake. Thanks for volonteering.
>>>
>>>I'm volonteering for clearing the current situation, based on fact
>>>rather than suppositions. Nothing more.
>> 
>> 
>> And you'll let maintainers deal with the mess you'll create. Great.
>> That is why I'm opposed to your plan.
> Which mess ? Until we have some real numbers, that is pure FUD. And
> testing if something build with another version is not really so hard...


> And BTW, i'd like to see as much opposition from you to other similar
> proposal where maintainers didn't even had a chance to discuss.

So, you think I'm posting ad nominem, don't you ? Well, I don't. I don't
like this proposal, I've already explained it. You simply add more work to
packagers for no real added value for the distro.

>>>>>>And yes, it is too much, since auto* knowledge is low among most
>>>>>>packagers (this is not a insult to anybody, it is a fact :), it won't
>>>>>>get fixed easily.
>>>>>
>>>>>The real long-term solution is to share the knowledge among the
>>>>>maintainers, and to lower the learning curve, instead of keeping the
>>>>>current insane situation IMHO.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>The real problem is upstream, not in the distro.
>>>>
>>>>And frankly, I think you are loosing your time on this particular
>>>>subject.
>>>
>>>I don't think so, from the regular questions occuring among maintainers
>>>about which autotools package to use.
>> 
>> 
>> To know which version to use is very simple : just look at Makefile.in, it
>> states which version of automake was used by upstream authors. Use the
>> same and everything is fine, no need to worry about anything else.
> That is a real point, as it concerns strategy. Your suggestion is indeed
> the easiest and most immediate way. However, it's also what led to the
> current situation: hardcoding the need for automake 1.6 because upstream
> developper used it instead of at least testing with current stable
> automake version, make us dependant from automake 1.6 forever. That's
> why I find it discussable.

And why is it a problem to use the same major version of automake as
software authors,except the "but it's not the latest version" reason ? I
haven't seen any rationale about that.

> Anyway, such kind of explanations would be welcome on the wiki to avoid
> cargo cult syndrom of maintainers blindly copying code they don't
> understand from spec to spec.

Done on wiki now.

-- 
Frederic Crozat
Mandriva