FESCo Proposal for blocking older version of autoconf & automake

[Andrew Haley]

Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> On Tue, 2008-05-06 at 09:54 +0100, Andrew Haley wrote:
>> Ralf Corsepius wrote:
>>> On Mon, 2008-05-05 at 17:50 +0100, Andrew Haley wrote:
>>>> Christopher Aillon wrote:
>>>>> On 05/05/2008 11:48 AM, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
>>>>>> This step is way over due. It also will teach maintainers not run the
>>>>>> autotools while building.
>>>>> It will also teach maintainers not to use Fedora for doing upstream work.
>>>> I agree.  This proposal seems to be all pain for no gain.
>>> The fact Fedora ships gcc-4.3.0 is all pain for no gain.
>> Certainly not!  There's been a bunch of useful improvements, as you'll see
>> on the gcc web page.
> No disagreement, but .. there also are a lot of changes, which require
> developers to change/update/rework their sources.
> 
>>> Please add versions of gcc of all active GCC-branches, such that people
>>> can continue to use f77 and c++'s backward stuff.
>>>
>>> Also consider adding a version of gcc which ships still supports libg++.
>>>
>>> Do you sense the insanity?
>> I don't think this is a relevant comparison.
> Why? 

It's in the following sentence.  It really helps to read a message before
beginning to reply.

> You are using a dead piece of SW called autoconf-2.13, others are
> using a dead piece of SW called gcc-2.7.2/egcs or libg++ or gcc-3.x.-
> 
> The only difference is RH playing nice to people using outdated
> autotools and pushing around people using outdated c/c++ code or
> features/miss-features from older gcc's.
> 
> In fact, you are aggressively forcing Fedora based developers to rework
> their c/c++/fortran-code or to quit using Fedora, but you refuse to fix
> your autotools-code? Double-standards!

Even if all of that were true, it wouldn't change the fact that this
proposal is all pain for no gain.

>>   Most importantly, gcc is a large 
>> package, so there is a considerable cost to shipping more than one version.  

Andrew.