Re: CVS Guile and configure, Makefile.in, and other auxiliary files...

[Lars J. Aas]

On Fri, Oct 06, 2000 at 09:40:13AM +0100, Neil Jerram wrote:
: Lars J. Aas writes:
: | On Wed, Oct 04, 2000 at 09:10:39PM +0200, Marius Vollmer wrote:
: | : Why?  Are there bugs in our configure stuff?
: |
: | I won't call it bugs - lets just say that CVS Autoconf and Automake haven't
: | managed to stay backwards compatible:
: 
: So perhaps it's a strategic error on the part of Autoconf?

Well, there are a lot of problems with the old Autoconf that couldn't
have been fixed without breaking backward compatibility.

: Seriously though, I've also found it a pain to have these
: autogenerated files in the repository.  It makes it that much harder
: to see what you have really changed, if `cvs diff' keeps showing you
: spurious Makefile.in and configure diffs just because you have
: different versions of the auto* tools.

Yes, I've given up changing your mind on this one - there are pros and
cons either way you have it...

: I don't think it would be unreasonable to require maintainers and
: developers to use the latest *released* versions of these tools, and
: then to fix Makefile.am and configure.in as necessary.

If you want to prepare for the next release of Autoconf, you
might want to check out the alpha release of Autoconf at
ftp://alpha.gnu.org/gnu/autoconf/autoconf-2.49a.tar.gz.
It is very close to how Autoconf 2.50 will be (yes, I know
the numbering is moronic).

  Lars J