Re: distinguish automake 1.11 from 1.12+ at autoconf time

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Mon, 6 Aug 2012, Eric Blake wrote:
> What _specific_ feature are you using from 1.12 that wasn't present in
> 1.11?  Or put another way, either your configure.ac works equally well
> with both versions (so you don't care which version), or there's
> something you do with 1.12 that doesn't work with 1.11 and therefore you
> are trying to make it conditional so that 1.11 can still process the
> rest of the file.  Determine that feature, and we are that much closer
> to helping you conditionalize your configure.ac to work with both versions.

This logic is reversed.  I am mostly worried about features that my 
package currently depends on which have been announced to be 
deprecated for no apparent reason, and without a sufficiently 
functional work-around, and with only the sound of crickets chirping 
when these issues are brought up on the list.

Most likely others are also worried that their project will stop 
working properly if a newer Automake is used.  Automake provides a 
means to prevent a lesser version of Automake from being used, but not 
a greater version because it was always assumed that documented 
Automake functionality was like a contract which would never be broken 
without good cause.

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