Re: automake datadir files location and versioning

[Ralf Corsepius]

Am Die, 2002-01-22 um 04.56 schrieb Tom Tromey:
> >>>>> "juhp" == Jens Petersen <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> juhp> While the recent versioning of automake is a good thing, I
> juhp> guess it introduces some issues with backward compatibility.
> juhp> For example quite a few packages/people assume that
> juhp> config.{guess,sub} are located in /usr/share/automake (not
> juhp> /usr/share/automake-<apiversion>).  With the introduction of
> juhp> versioning they will no longer be able to find those files.
> 
> juhp> While I know that there is better and official way for
> juhp> packages to get those files (automake -a), any thoughts on
> juhp> this issue?
> 
> My first inclination is to let them fend for themselves.  This
> directory has always been an implementation detail of automake.  I
> don't think we've ever documented or advertised its contents, and
> we've always felt free to change it at will.
Fully agreed.

> Can you give an example of what programs rely on this?
> I'm curious to know what we might be breaking.

So far, I have met one: 

SuSE's /usr/lib/rpm/suse_macros (part of SuSE's patches to rpm):

/usr/lib/rpm/suse_macros:      [ -d /usr/share/automake ] || { \
/usr/lib/rpm/suse_macros:        echo 'Please, install automake.' \

/usr/lib/rpm/suse_macros:            %{!-f:[ $d/$f -nt
   /usr/share/automake/$f ] ||} cp -f /usr/share/automake/$f $d/$f \

Ralf