Re: Autotools requirements are too recent

[Martin Dorey]

I did warn you.

> Fedora is know for having some of the most up to date tools.

It must indeed be a cold day in hell, as I used automake 1.16.1 from Debian Buster.

>  there's no hope it can build where a newer GNU Make is truly needed

Perhaps the widespread lack of this automake is what's behind any reticence Paul might be evincing about doing another release.  Probably not, though, as a release would give you a tarball that doesn't need autotools to build.

>  I don't care if there's a bug or race during install.

If you want to engage constructively with the problem, you'll find a clue in:

http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/make.git/commit/README.git?id=63b42fa235835cbeac6c1b9182f32798ea135dfd

I don't recall reading anything further than is there, but Google turned up:

https://lists.gnu.org/r/bug-gnulib/2018-06/msg00029.html

Looks like you'd have to debug automake, which sounds... unpleasant.

---

From: Bug-make <bug-make-bounces+address@hidden> on behalf of Jeffrey Walton <address@hidden>
Sent: Friday, August 24, 2018 4:46 PM
To: address@hidden
Subject: Autotools requirements are too recent

 

$ autoreconf -f -i
configure.ac:35: error: require Automake 1.16.1, but have 1.15.1
autoreconf: automake failed with exit status: 1

Please consider dropping version requirements. I'm working on Fedora
28. Fedora is know for having some of the most up to date tools.

If something can't build on the latest Fedora there's no hope it can
build where a newer GNU Make is truly needed, like AIX 7, OS X 10.8,
Ubuntu 12, or Solaris 11.

(In fact I test some software back to Fedora 1 with GCC 2.9 and
Windows XP with Visual Studio .Net. Those are the machines I need to
update a handful of tools on. They won't have the bleeding edge stuff
Make is embracing).

Also consider, I could not care less if I have old Autotools. I don't
care if there's a bug or race during install. I'll live with the risk.
My job is to get a new Make on the machine, not dicking around with
Autotools versions. Anything that stops me from updating Make is a
distraction and waste of energy.

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