Re: Why AC_C_CHAR_UNSIGNED?

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Thu, 26 Jun 2008, Stepan Kasal wrote:
> > > If your autotools maintainer cannot do that, you shall return him for
> > > replacement of defective parts.   ;-)
> >
> > I would be truely aghast if I found that the several people who
> > independently maintain autotools for my own package were doing this
> > kind of surgury on it.
>
> IMHO, this is not a strong reason.  Autoconfigury is interconnected
> with the code anyway, and things like this can happen.  There has to
> be an agreement about what is the autotoolser allowed to commit and
> what needs your approval, anyway.

It seems that we are still not quite communicating.  Each major OS has 
independent package maintainers (often many tens of maintainers) who 
usually have nothing to do with the original packge 
maintainer/developer and are not in the habit of asking permission or 
making themselves known.  The package author can be dead and buried 
and they will still function.  A common task is to replace the 
autotools delivered with the package with versions prescribed by the 
OS package maintenance team so that all of the packages in the OS 
release are consistent.  Often various patches are applied in advance.
This common scenario should be considered whenever an autotools 
feature is deprecated.

Bob
======================================
Bob Friesenhahn
address@hidden, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/