Re: FYI: use api version

[Tom Tromey]

>>>>> "adl" == Alexandre Duret-Lutz <address@hidden> writes:

adl> I'm very sceptic about this.  The current definition
adl>   APIVERSION=`echo "$VERSION" | sed -e 's/^\([[0-9]]*\.[[0-9]]*\).*$/\1/'`
adl> means that 1.5 1.5a 1.5b 1.5c 1.5d 1.5e will all be API-compatible.

I thought about that briefly but didn't do anything about it.
This is a bit problematic because our versioning scheme is a bit
goofy.  We use `1.5b' to mean both "prerelease for 1.5.1" and
"prerelease for 1.6".

One idea would be to change our approach to numbering.

adl> If 1.5e is the last version before 1.6, makes only documentation
adl> changes, and is API-compatible with 1.5, I don't understand why
adl> 1.6 is not deemed compatible with 1.5.

Exactly :-(.
This may require a process fix and not a code fix, on our end.
Or maybe something else.  Any suggestions?

Releases have always been a big problem area for the automake project.
I still seem to act on bad habits acquired during the 0.29 days.
Time to grow and change (again).

adl> (Actually, that's not clear to me if this will always works.  To
adl> play the devil's advocate: is fixing a bug someone relies on
adl> considered an API breakage?)

Well, hopefully this will put some evolutionary pressure on the
documentation.  I agree there are grey areas here.  But there are also
cases which are unambiguous, and we can aim to reduce ambiguity by
changing the documentation to reflect what we know to be invalid (but
which the users may not).

adl> I also have a question regarding the current implementation:
adl> shouldn't `missing' and `init.m4' support versioned `aclocal'
adl> too?

Fixed as appended.  Thanks.

Tom

Index: ChangeLog
from  Tom Tromey  <address@hidden>

        * lib/missing: Accept versioned aclocal.
        * m4/init.m4 (AM_INIT_AUTOMAKE): Look for versioned aclocal.

Index: lib/missing
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvs/automake/automake/lib/missing,v
retrieving revision 1.19
diff -u -r1.19 missing
--- lib/missing 2002/01/15 23:54:12 1.19
+++ lib/missing 2002/01/17 23:06:47
@@ -87,7 +87,7 @@
     exit 1
     ;;
 
-  aclocal)
+  aclocal*)
     if test -z "$run" && ($1 --version) > /dev/null 2>&1; then
        # We have it, but it failed.
        exit 1
Index: m4/init.m4
===================================================================
RCS file: /cvs/automake/automake/m4/init.m4,v
retrieving revision 1.41
diff -u -r1.41 init.m4
--- m4/init.m4 2002/01/16 19:05:47 1.41
+++ m4/init.m4 2002/01/17 23:06:47
@@ -73,7 +73,7 @@
 # Some tools Automake needs.
 AC_REQUIRE([AM_SANITY_CHECK])dnl
 AC_REQUIRE([AC_ARG_PROGRAM])dnl
-AM_MISSING_PROG(ACLOCAL, aclocal)
+AM_MISSING_PROG(ACLOCAL, "aclocal-${am__api_version}")
 AM_MISSING_PROG(AUTOCONF, autoconf)
 AM_MISSING_PROG(AUTOMAKE, "automake-${am__api_version}")
 AM_MISSING_PROG(AUTOHEADER, autoheader)