[PATCHES] Enable building using GNU Automake 1.13, 1.14

[Werner Koch]

On Tue, 27 Aug 2013 13:31, christian at quelltextlich.at said:

>   http://packages.debian.org/search?suite=sid&keywords=automake
> shows 1.13.3 as default automake even for Sid.

Sorry, my fault.  I only looked at it using apt-cache show and that
scrollend away the new version and thus I only noticed the 1.11.

> And once people realize that they are using a too new automake, then
> README.GIT shows them how to use an older automake.

I expect that people building from git are well aware of automake and
problems using a a non-released version.

> README.GIT does not mention which automake versions are expected to
> work, and which are not :-/

It can't.  It is the usual problem of future incompatibilities.  This
can't be handled by plain version number checks.  If the automake author
would add an extra API version number which is bumped after backward
incompatible changes, we could check for it.  But without such a thing
it is hard to get things right.  Consider next month they decide to
revert the incompatible changes. Shall we then backout the change - in
hundreds of packages or keep on carrying loads of less needed code?

It has always been hard to defend autotools against people not willing
to read the manuals and switching to cmake (shudder).  With such an
incompatible change as recently introduced, I feel slapped into the
face.


Salam-Shalom,

   Werner

-- 
Die Gedanken sind frei.  Ausnahmen regelt ein Bundesgesetz.