autoconf and epel-5

[Kevin Kofler]

Ed Hill wrote:
> Kevin, if you *consistently* pushed for perceived improvements (that is,
> advocated for "new-and-supposedly-improved" bits across the board) then
> I could appreciate your views as a progressive and bleeding-edge sort
> of guy.  But when you simultaneously advocate for all-new build systems
> while pining for older, less capable, and buggier (less standards
> compliant) compilers then the inconsistencies stand out.  It suggests
> that you either lack a broad appreciation of the improvements or,
> equally as damning, you are willing to ignore them since you are
> focused solely on the changes that are immediately convenient or
> appealing to you.

Switching to CMake is a one-time change and will save you from a lot of
changes to deal with backwards-incompatible autotools later. CMake tries
hard to maintain backwards compatibility, see:
http://www.cmake.org/cmake/help/cmake2.6docs.html#section_Compatibility%20Commands
http://www.cmake.org/cmake/help/cmake2.6docs.html#section_Policies
and also the older CMAKE_BACKWARDS_COMPATIBILITY mechanism, which is still
supported, see the policy CMP0001:
http://www.cmake.org/cmake/help/cmake2.6docs.html#policy:CMP0001
That's very different from the autotools' behavior of breaking things willy
nilly (yet does not preclude fixing historical warts).

You have to think in the longer term.

        Kevin Kofler