Re: What is going on with releases, mailing lists?

[Pavel Roskin]

Hi, Bob!

I'm dropping the dead maintainers address from the cc:

On Mon, 10 Nov 2003, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:

> I think that autoconf 2.59 is available in a directory adjacent to the
> one that contains the libtool 1.5 release. :-)

Sorry, I don't see anything funny in that.  Maybe I haven't been
participating in the tools development for a long time, but most users
didn't participate in the development at all, yet we want them to use out
software.

OK, let's try to locate libtool 1.5.  ftp.gnu.org has as a link called
libtool-1.5.tar.gz.back-RSN.README that says:

 The following files are not available because their authenticity is
 being confirmed.  We expect to have them uploaded Real Soon Now (RSN).

I hate such messages when they don't have a date.  Will it take hours or
weeks or years?

Let's go to alpha.gnu.org.  I don't see libtool there at all.  Neither is
autoconf there.

Let's go to Google and search for Libtool.  First hit is
http://www.gnu.org/software/libtool/libtool.html

It's a nice page with a nice gnu surrounded by tools.  The link to libtool
1.5 leads to the same "Real Soon Now".  Links to CVS snapshots are broken.

Let's search for libtool-1.5.tar.gz on Google.  The first working link is
http://ftp.club.cc.cmu.edu/pub/gnu/libtool/libtool-1.5.tar.gz

It is so hard to check that file against libtool built from CVS with the
appropriate tag?  That would confirm that the file is genuine.  Trying to
do that:

$ cvs -d :pserver:address@hidden:/cvsroot/libtool co libtool
cvs [checkout aborted]: reading from server: Connection reset by peer

Too bad.  I'll have to wait when the CVS server returns online.  Let's try
the "mirror repository" at anoncvs.ffii.org.  Yes, it's working.  But
there is no release-1-5 tag there!  The latest is release-1-4-2.

I still haven't found Autoconf 2.59.  Let's return to its page on
savannah.  Trying to use Google - it's not in the first 10 hits.  Well,
it's easier just to type in the URL.

Let's go.  Mailing lists->autoconf-maintainers archives->November.  The
only message is from Akim, it's an announcement of Autoconf 2.58.  OK,
let's get the URL from it and change 8 with 9:

$ wget http://www.lrde.epita.fr/~akim/download/autoconf-2.59.tar.bz2
--12:11:54--
http://www.lrde.epita.fr/%7Eakim/download/autoconf-2.59.tar.bz2
           => `autoconf-2.59.tar.bz2'
Resolving www.lrde.epita.fr... done.
Connecting to www.lrde.epita.fr[163.5.255.23]:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 404 Not Found
12:11:56 ERROR 404: Not Found.

OK, I give up.  I used to be an active co-maintainer of Autoconf, and now I
cannot get the latest public release!  Now imagine how many problems would
have somebody who never worked on the project and who is not aware of
savannah.gnu.org?

If we want our software to be used, we should release it properly.  Why
does every project goes to this mess as soon as I switch my attention to
something else?

Maybe I'm in a bad mood or I'm missing something obvious, or even plain
stupid, but I'll send this e-mail anyway.  Who knows, maybe it will change
something.

P.S. subversions.gnu.org is back online.  release-1-5 is there!  It makes
me wonder if the "mirror repository" is indeed updated "hourly".  Yes,
http://ftp.club.cc.cmu.edu/pub/gnu/libtool/libtool-1.5.tar.gz matches CVS
exactly.  Installing Autoconf 2.57 and Automake 1.7.3.  There is a minor
difference in tests/Makefile.in, perhaps due to different sorting in
different Perl versions.  Also, texinfo.tex is different because even old
Automake used the new version.  Apart from that, the files are identical.

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin