Re: please bring back program suffix for autoconf bin files

[Dan Kegel]

Jens Petersen wrote:
> > [Dan Kegel wrote: 
> >  why is there no /usr/bin/autoconf-2.57 in Red Hat 8.1beta?]
>
> The main reason for doing this was that autoconf-2.53 was
> appearing in spec files and this breaks of course everytime
> the Autoconf version is up'ed.  So the thinking is: use
> "/usr/bin/autoconf" for the moving newer version and
> "/usr/bin/autoconf-2.13" for the old static one.  I did put
> the idea forward upstream about adding API versioning to
> Autoconf like Automake has had since 1.6, but there was no
> response unfortunately. :-|  It's anyway really too late to
> make such a change for the coming release now, but I guess
> there is nothing to stop you from making the symlink
> yourself. :)
>
> > BTW, automake in Phoebe *does* seem to have the kind of
> > suffixes I want, so it's just autoconf that's missing it
> > currently.
>
> Yep, because it comes from upstream - since Automake 1.6
> there has been API versioning in Automake.

Sigh.  I saw your post three months ago
( http://mail.gnu.org/archive/html/autoconf/2002-12/msg00029.html )
and didn't speak up then.  I guess I should have!
Thanks for the explanation.

Autoconf people, it would be very helpful if autoconf
instituted versioning support, i.e. a way for build
scripts and the like to specify which version of autoconf
to use.  Normal developers won't need it, perhaps, but
people like me who are trying to write a script to
build fifty different open source packages from source
would find it *very handy*.

As you may know, Debian and Cygwin have both found this
important enough to come up with their own way of doing
it, but having different schemes for Debian, Cygwin, and
the various Red Hats makes life difficult.  A unified
versioning scheme from the autoconf maintainers would help.
It doesn't even need an autodetecting script; the
"/usr/bin/autoconf is a symlink to the newest version" scheme
would be fine.

Thanks,
Dan


--
Dan Kegel
http://www.kegel.com
http://counter.li.org/cgi-bin/runscript/display-person.cgi?user=78045