FESCo Proposal for blocking older version of autoconf & automake

[Ralf Corsepius]

On Tue, 2008-05-06 at 16:46 +0200, Stepan Kasal wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> On Mon, May 05, 2008 at 06:53:59PM +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
> > On Mon, 2008-05-05 at 12:33 -0400, Christopher Aillon wrote:
> > > Or if autotools maintainers would stop changing the interface so 
> > > freaking often, this wouldn't be a problem either....
> > Apparently you don't have much clues about the autotools.
> > 
> > They did not change the "interface so often".
> > 
> > There has been one big interface change: It occurred between
> > autoconf-2.13 and autoconf-2.50 - Many years ago.
> 
> well, there was also the change in Automake 1.4 -> 1.5, which
> happened after that, and then the "stabilization period" for "new"
> automake until, say, 1.8.
Yep, all this took place such a long time ago, I forgot about this.

Probably because, from my experience, this change had been less
intrusive. It either broke existing configurations hard and explicit
or didn't break them at all.

> So it is about 7 years ago since the last interface change and
> we can say that Autotools are really stable and mature for at least 4
> years.
Matches entirely with my experience.

> What _is_ the problem, is that many projects use an undocumented
> internals, instead of requesting an enhancement.
> And _that_ kind of hacks break very easily with a new release.
Fully agreed.

If mainstream Linux distros had been a little more aggressive about
abandoning support for outdated/discontinued autotools (like they are
doing with other tools), people would have learned about their mistakes
on autotool usage earlier and would take autotool upgrades with a much
more relaxed attitude.

Ralf