rpm and config.{guess, sub} (was [aarch64 bugs] dpkg: Does not support aarch64 in f19 and rawhide bug #925276)

[Oron Peled]

On Monday 17 June 2013 22:58:53 Alec Leamas wrote:
> On 2013-06-17 21:17, Jerry James wrote:
> > ... I'd rather not spend the small amount of time I can devote to
> > open source software work messing with a configure script just because
> > somebody thinks they should be able to run autoreconf with a newer
> > version of the autotools and get away with it.
> 
> Fair enough.  Hope you did not recognize me as one of those who "just
> thinks they should be able to run autoreconf with a newer version of the
> autotools and get away with it" - that was not my idea.

Actually, that was me who *hoped* we could get away with this ;-)

> ... If we ever will be able to write GL about it, we should keep both
> doors open. Perhaps with a recommendation about one of
> them being preferred, but nothing more drastic.

Agreed. Let me be more specific:
 * If upstream uses a modern autotools, than "autoreconf" should be preferred (IMO).
 * If not, we should advise them to modernize (and if we can, try to help them).

Because using very old autotools version isn't so different than using other
very old development tools (think about compilers, support libraries, etc.).
It is "OK", but not the most advisable practice. Helping upstream to
modernize is helping our ecosystem and helping Fedora being "First".

Again, all of this should be *recommendation*. Like Jerry James mentioned,
it should be weighted by the package maintainer against other tasks
which may be more urgent/important.

-- 
Oron Peled                                 Voice: +972-4-8228492
oron at actcom.co.il                  http://users.actcom.co.il/~oron
"Without the wind, the grass does not move.
 Without software, hardware is useless."
                        -- Tao of Programming