Re: Automake 1.6.3 issue

[Bruce Korb]

Akim Demaille wrote:

> | Cool.  Since we do not need amk 1.6.3 for our build,
> | I will change the configure.ac requirement to 1.6.2,
> | which does work.
> 
> What ... ???  The bug I'm referring to is only the
> fact that the error message did not say `1.6.3 is a version of
> Automake'.  There is no known bug in 1.6.3, and if 1.6.2 did not
> complain, then it was a bug in 1.6.2.

We are talking about several errors:

1.  autoconf macro for automake version check did not say the
    version mismatch was due to an automake version.
    Alexandre is fixing that.  Thanks.

2.  The automake error reporting bug that said I did something bad,
    but there was not enough information to find the problem

    > /usr/local/share/automake-1.6/am/header-vars.am: \
    >   pkgincludedir was already defined in condition TRUE, \
    >   which implies condition INSTALL_SNPRINTFV_TRUE
    > pkgincludedir (Automake, where = \
    >    /usr/local/share/automake-1.6/am/header-vars.am) =
    >   {
    >     TRUE => $(includedir)/@PACKAGE@
    >   }
    > error:  bootstrap failed

    I'm sure this makes sense to someone in the bowels of automake,
    but I'm afraid not to me.

3.  The change in behavior between automake 1.6.2 and 1.6.3.
    My project builds without a single warning on 1.6.2, therefore
    the failure to configure, let alone build, is a bug in 1.6.3.
    It should to be made a warning before an error; minimally
    the real problem cause must be reported (see #2 above).

4.  The indeterminable misuse in one of my Makefile.am's:

    Makefile.am
    config/Makefile.am
    autoopts/Makefile.am
    autoopts/test/Makefile.am
    agen5/Makefile.am
    agen5/test/Makefile.am
    doc/Makefile.am
    columns/Makefile.am
    getdefs/Makefile.am
    getdefs/test/Makefile.am
    xml2ag/Makefile.am
    snprintfv/Makefile.am
    snprintfv/tests/Makefile.am
    snprintfv/snprintfv/Makefile.am
    snprintfv/doc/Makefile.am
    snprintfv/config/Makefile.am

There may be more, but our network is dying, so I did it from memory.

I confess, I'm not jumping at the opportunity to debug these.
They've been working successfully ever since I accommodated
Automake's change in behavior on distcheck.  At least that one
had a traceable symptom.  I was not asking or expecting you to
jump at it either.  I just consider 1.6.3 broken and want it out
of the build dependency.