Re: [PATCH] {master} compile: remove support for $(INCLUDES)

[Eric Blake]

On 08/22/2012 09:12 AM, Stefano Lattarini wrote:
>>From 54a49542d417850e646fefe7bad56546a2362449 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
> Message-Id: <address@hidden>
> From: Stefano Lattarini <address@hidden>
> Date: Wed, 22 Aug 2012 16:40:15 +0200
> Subject: [PATCH] compile: remove support for $(INCLUDES)
> 
> It has already been deprecated in the manual and by warnings in the
> 'obsolete' categories for ages (at least since 2003), in favour of
> AM_CPPFLAGS.  Automake-NG has removed support for it already.
> 
> So, by removing it in Automake 1.13, we will simplify the transition
> path for people that want to switch to Automake-NG.

What a bummer for packages like libvirt that strive to be buildable from
git on both RHEL 5 (requires INCLUDES, since automake 1.9.6 is still the
current version there) as well as Fedora rawhide (where removing support
for INCLUDES entirely will force the issue over to AM_CPPFLAGS).  It
means I'll have to come up with some compatibility hacks in order to
share one Makefile.am among both automake versions.

Or maybe I'll just give up and say that libvirt can no longer be
bootstrapped on RHEL 5 (it can still be developed there, but only if you
bootstrap somewhere else and then 'make dist' and develop on the
distributed tarball).  At any rate, I'm fine taking the burden of trying
to support cross-automake versioning in order to cater to the fact that
enterprise systems are still stuck on ancient automake, but a little
help from automake would make it easier.

I'd much rather a mandatory noisy warning period before a feature is
completely removed.  Yes, you've warned, but the warning wasn't
mandatory, so no one has been forced to come up with workarounds yet.
It is only once people have the workarounds in place that it is safe to
remove the feature; I think that argues that you can't remove INCLUDES
until 1.14, but that 1.13 should make the warning unconditional.  It
would also be nice if you provided a feature that could be probed at m4
time in order to write a configure.ac that can then set an automake
conditional, so that Makefile.am can then set either INCLUDES or
AM_CPPFLAGS as appropriate within the two branches of the conditional.

-- 
Eric Blake   address@hidden    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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