FESCo Proposal for blocking older version of autoconf & automake

[Toshio Kuratomi]

Tom Lane wrote:
> Matthias Clasen <mclasen at redhat.com> writes:
>> On Mon, 2008-05-05 at 18:22 +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
>>> The key to avoid autotool compatibility issues is simple: Do not
>>> generate autotool generated files while building.
>>> Generate them off-line.
> 
>> ...which won't be easy if the autotool versions you need to generate
>> them are kicked out.
> 
> Yeah.  We have a rule against shipping binary blobs.  A binary blob can
> fairly be defined as a derived file that you lack the source to, or lack
> the tools to get from the source to the derived file.  How is it
> different if we ship an autotools-derived file that the recipient
> cannot regenerate from source?  Smells like a GPL violation to me.
> 
The idea is to ship both the patch for configure.ac/Makefile.am which 
can go upstream and the diff between the old version of the generated 
configure/Makefile/Makefile.in's and the new.  So source is being provided.

-Toshio