Re: m4 files not unique in 8.3 environments

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Tue, 1 Mar 2005 09:50:59 +0100
> From: Stepan Kasal <address@hidden>
> Cc: 
> 
> But Bruno feels that renaming the files would negatively affect
> readability of code.

Someone will have to explain this to me, because I don't see the
connection.  Really.

> But please bite it, forgive Bruno his principles, and go on.

See, that's the whole point: we should be able to cooperate without
sacrificing our principles.  I don't have to forgive Bruno his, and he
doesn't have to forgive me mine.  This can only happen if we don't let
principles overshadow the need to be kind and cooperative.

> Can another solution be found?  Could you implement a "global"
> fnchange.lst which would apply to all packages coming later?

We could do anything: this is software.  However, please consider 2
grave problems: (1) any solution we introduce will take time to
propagate to people's machines; in the meantime, we leave users with
an unsolved problem.  And (2) Make is one of a small set of very basic
development tools, something without which one cannot build any other
package, and therefore, building Make itself should require the least
amount (ideally, zero) of tools that are not part of the basic
OS--it's not a coincidence that Make, unlike almost any other GNU
package ported to DJGPP, is not built by running the standard
configure script via the ported Bash.  Adding yet another prerequisite
to building Make would not be a good idea.

> I hope that you find this mail less annoying than the other ones.

Your mail was constructive and tried to help, so thanks.