Re: Constantly changing libtool

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Wed, 14 Apr 2021, Laurence Marks wrote:

> I have some software which has been "fine" for about 15 years, with one
> exception: every 6-12 months or so when I (or students/others) compile it
> we run into version problems. The typical ones are version mismatch between
> libtool and/or aclocal (called from libtool). While I can futze around with
> libtoolize/aclocal/autoconf/automake etc until it works, this is not viable
> for users who barely understand linux.
>
> Is there some way in configure.ac (Makefile.am) to setup so the relevant
> version fixes can be done automatically? There are so many posts about
> version mismatches that this should be there. Maybe it is and I just missed
> it.

Most problems seem to stem from packages providing the generated files 
from Autoconf, Automake, and libtool so that end users don't need to 
have the tools available.  This would be combined with file time-stamp 
issues.  Many source control systems do not preserve file time-stamps.

If the operating system distribution (or some other source) provides 
versions which differ from what the package provided, then there will 
be a problem.

One thing that can help quite a lot is to include AM_MAINTAINER_MODE 
in configure.ac so that the user needs to add the 
--enable-maintainer-mode option in order to enable self-maintenance 
rules.  If the user does not provide the option, then the existing 
files will be used, which is usually just fine unless a file has 
actually been modified.

It is sometimes said that 'autoreconf --force' will solve all 
problems, but in my experience this is not always true.

Bob
--
Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen@simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/
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