Re: How to use install-data-local conditionally with automake-1.6.3

[Steffen Dettmer]

(OT)

Hi Ralf!

On Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 9:48 PM, <address@hidden> wrote:
> * Steffen Dettmer wrote on Thu, Jan 21, 2010 at 02:15:57PM CET:
>> Perl 5.006 required--this is only version 5.00503, stopped at -e line 1.
>
> I'm really not interested in bug reports against 8-year-old 1.6.3.
> Perl 5.6 is ten(!) years old, if you can't update at least your
> development environment to that, then I'm afraid I cannot help you.

:)
Yes, of course you are absolutely right.
I came with an extreme example of course :)
Yes, this ancient machine installation it is 10 years old. And still
running as on its first day :) Great, isn't it? Close to the
definition of stability :)
Yes, it still works, so why change.
(ok, ok, you mentioned many many very good reasons why :))

As soon as some time will be avialable I'll try to build a few systems
with a recent version.

Maybe, if this does not harm, and I guess it shouldn't be, support for
1.6.3 still can remain by writing Makefiles working with 1.6.3 up to
1.11 and newer. At least this would be the ideal.

> Issues with updating to newer Autoconf and to newer Automake usually
> require you to go through their respective NEWS files and addressing
> documented incompatible changes.  The rest should be things that were
> never well-defined.

I'm afraid we were sometimes a bit ... erm... pragmatic when writing
*.mak files...
We have some libraries in maintenance since more than ten years. It
think it is great that it still works with only a few changes. In
meantime, I guess, several IDEs were "in" and now are "out" and
forgotten. Java changed half the language, at least :)
(Personally, I really like stable things. I think, if the recent
state-of-the-art technology would be a little bit slower, benefits
could arise and the world perhaps would see less crap and
one-hit-wonder-apps :) I love that I can develop on a 10 years old
linux host. I hate that I cannot surft the web with a 3 years old
browser and cannot update a 2 years old linux...)

>> Ohh, and automake-1.6.3 is much faster that 1.11, right? :-)
>
> If you have issues with the speed of newer Automake releases, then
> show me your package build system setup.  We may find bottlenecks in
> Automake code or things to do better in your build system.

Ohh thank you. Your support and offer are outstanding and stunnig.
Yes, you are right, probably automake performance is (almost) no
issue. Other optimisations surely help more (for example, I think
using fewer Makefiles would speed up a lot).

> OTOH, many rules that new automake generates are faster than those of
> older automake.

ohh good point, too.

oki,

Steffen