Re: Libtool 1.4.3

[Akim Demaille]

>>>>> "Russ" == Russ Allbery <address@hidden> writes:

Great thread people!  I'm happy to see you're alive :)


Russ> There were a variety of reasons for breaking backward
Russ> compatibility, like choosing to clean up quoting, but that's a
Russ> justification for doing it, not an argument that it didn't
Russ> happen.  It very clearly did happen.  Calling the autoconf
Russ> scripts that worked in autoconf 2.13 but not in 2.5x "broken" is
Russ> a deflection that I'd be more sympathetic to if the ways in
Russ> which they were "broken" were clearly documented in autoconf
Russ> 2.13, but they weren't.  Which means that the language
Russ> definition was changed (to something much more precise, mind),
Russ> not that scripts that followed the previous language definition
Russ> such as it was were broken.

I don't want to dive into this debate, and I think that Russ' summary
is very satisfying in that it exposes the point of view of all the
parties.

Whatever your opinion is, this debate is anyway a total loss of time
for all of us (except for having the opportunity of reading the few
usual good laughs from TEDdy Bear, the great clown of our mailing
lists) since Autoconf will not be more 2.13 compatible in the future.

If people consider we deliberatedly broken bugward compatibility, then
fine, you're free to be wrong.  It's not what happened (and I can tell
you that a lot of code would not have been written if that was our
intention), but I don't care what people think wrt this now,
because...

Because today the only reasonable attitude is asking ourselves how can
we help people making the move.  I worked *immensely* on autoupdate,
it took me days to write such a complex tool.  I wrote documentation
explaining proper Autoconf programming.  I added sections to ease the
transition.  I made public calls for people looking for help.  I'm
ready to do more, but please, tell me what is needed.