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

[Guillaume Rousse]

Guillaume Rousse wrote:
> Frederic Crozat wrote:
> 
>>>>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.
> 
> My rationales were mainly to not get stuck forever with old versions of
> automake, the same way we prefer avoiding maintaining old gcc versions.
> Also, I wanted to reduce the number of additional packages neeeded for
> backporting, when hardcoded version was not available in previous
> release, whereas unversioned use was OK.
> 
> I realize now your strategy is safer, as it brings more garanties the
> package will still build in the future, at a relatively low maintainance
> overhead. You got the point. Does anyone else agree than always
> hardcoding exact version of autotools used is better ? Or are they
> exceptions ? In other term, can we make it a general policy ?
> 
> If so, we should rather revert previous 1.8 and 1.9 automake branches
> merge. And maybe still clean up unversioned
> binaries/alternatives/virtual packages in our automake packages.
So, can we agree on the following points, so as to close this issue:

1) we need a distinct branch for each major automake version
 -> reintroducing 1.8 and 1.9 distinct packages

2) we should never use non-versioned automake call in our packages
 -> we should have rpmlint errors about it
 -> we should remove unversioned binaries from current 1.8 package
 -> we should remove unversioned dependencies from rpm package

I'm not sure about removing the alternative system completly. They are
people using autotools for something else as producing
mandrake-compliant packages, and they may be interested in still having
a way to do it in a version-neutral way.
-- 
Your weapon was made on an assembly line by the same type of people who
made your car
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