Requiring Automake 1.16.1 due to Gnulib getloadavg?

[Paul Eggert]

Paul Smith wrote:

> * Replace local portability code with Gnulib content.  Unfortunately due to a
>    problem with Gnulib support for getloadavg, this forces a requirement on
>    Automake 1.16 or above in order to build from Git.  See README.git.

bootstrap.conf and configure.ac say "1.16.1" so presumably NEWS should say 
"1.16.1" rather than "1.16".

However, I assume this note refers to the email thread rooted here:

https://lists.gnu.org/r/bug-gnulib/2018-06/msg00024.html

and it's not clear to me what the Gnulib/Automake portability problem is. I 
attempted to reproduce the problem on Ubuntu 18.04.3 (which use Automake 1.15.1) 
by changing bootstrap.conf and configure.ac to say "1.15.1", but my 
'./bootstrap; ./configure --prefix=/tmp/prefix; make check; make install; make 
SRCROOTDIR=$HOME/src/gnu ChangeLog; make dist' worked fine. So perhaps the 
problem (whatever it is) is not due entirely to Automake version.

For what it's worth, Emacs uses Gnulib getloadavg, but since Emacs switched from 
Automake to GNU make in 2017 its build procedure does not require any particular 
Automake version. Perhaps GNU Make could start depending on (an older version 
of) GNU Make, and take this approach in some future version.

Conversely, Coreutils uses Gnulib getloadavg and still uses Automake, but it 
seems to work fine requiring only Automake 1.11.2 or later. Perhaps this is 
because Coreutils switched to non-recursive 'make' in 2012. This might be 
another approach GNU Make could take.