Re: Libtool 1.4.3

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Tue, 8 Oct 2002, Thomas E. Dickey wrote:

> > > I agree.  I can't imagine why anyone would want to use an antique
> > > version of Autoconf which dates from 1996.
> >
> >  Because it works? In any case, it's the respective maintainer's choice.
> >
> >  Making autoconf incompatible with previous versions of itself while not
> >  upping the major release number at the same time was a pretty bad move 
> > IMHO.
>
> Deliberately introducing design incompatibilities simply encourages people
> to use other tools.

I developed/maintain the configure script for ImageMagick.  While the
total lines in the generated configure script is meaningless, it is
less than 1/2 of what you report for PHP, and PHP's configure script
is 4-8X larger than typical configure scripts for other large packages
(e.g. 4X larger than the configure script for OpenSSH).  This seems
odd to me.

Having adopted every new Autoconf which has been released, I can
happily say that as long as you avoid using undocumented Autoconf
internals, it is not particularly difficult to make the minor
modifications required to stay current.

I don't believe that the decision by some factions to stick with a
particular Autoconf software version for the rest of time should be
allowed to hinder the development of Libtool.

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