Re: Merging the msvc branch into maint

[Peter Rosin]

Stefano Lattarini skrev 2011-12-22 11:25:
> On 12/22/2011 10:54 AM, Peter Rosin wrote:
>> Stefano Lattarini skrev 2011-12-22 09:41:
>>> On 12/22/2011 08:26 AM, Peter Rosin wrote:
>>>
>>>> Since the msvc branch has been merged into both branch-1.11 and master,
>>>> it seems natural to also merge it into maint. No?
>>>>
>>> I'd rather not.  First, it wouldn't be useful, since we do 1.11.x 
>>> maintenance
>>> releases from branch-1.11 only, we plan to do the next 1.12 release from
>>> master, and both of these branches already contain the features from msvc.
>>
>> I'm ok with that.  However, ...
>>
>> [SNIP good explanation]
>>
> I've verified what you said by experimenting with a fresh automake.git clone, 
> and
> indeed you are right.  So sorry for the confusion, and thanks for correcting 
> me.
> 
> Still, even without the merge conflicts I had (erroneously) predicted, a 
> serious
> problem would remain with the msvc->maint merge, that is ...
> 
>>> ... worse, the code in maint would end up having a behaviour more similar to
>>> that of the next major version than to that of the next maintenance version.
>>> We could backport the hacks for 1.11.2 into maint, and confuse the
>>> already-too-messy automake history even more.  Neither of these two 
>>> possibility
>>> should particularly appealing to me, given that in the end they do not offer
>>> any real advantage anyway.
>>
>> This is a conclusion from your above faulty assumption, I believe,
>>
> It seems to me that the part of my argumentations quoted above is still 
> correct;
> could you explain in more details why do you think it is wrong?  Thanks.

No, I can't, because you are right. Oops, sorry. The behaviour of maint would
indeed be as in master with extra-portability being enabled by -Wall. But
currently lib/compile and lib/depcomp are ancient in maint compared to the
current version as available in both branch-1.11 and master, and *I* think
that is worse.

In retrospect, the 1.11 variant should have been developed first, then merged
into master via maint, then master could have been fixed to its current state.

Oh well. Let's forget about it.

Sorry for the noise, and cheers,
Peter