Re: Should libXt-devel be required to build Emacs?

[Eli Zaretskii]

> Date: Fri, 22 Dec 2006 08:43:37 +0100
> From: =?ISO-8859-1?Q?Jan_Dj=E4rv?= <address@hidden>
> Cc: address@hidden, address@hidden, address@hidden
> 
> Chong Yidong skrev:
> > Richard Stallman <address@hidden> writes:
> > 
> >>     There's a problem with this: Autoconf 2.61 was only released in
> >>     November this year, and it requires a new version of M4 (1.4.8), which
> >>     in turn requires a new libc6.  Most existing GNU/Linux distributions
> >>     won't have these packages (at least in their "stable" branches).
> >>
> >> That's not so bad.  Most users don't need to rebuild the configure
> >> file, so they won't have a problem.
> >>
> >> However, we could ask the Autoconf developers to release a patched
> >> version 2.59.1 which fixes this bug and doesn't require a new M4.
> > 
> > On the other hand, most users don't compile Emacs at all; they use
> > pre-packaged binaries; those that do compile Emacs can surely install
> > libXt-dev.
> 
> I think one of the goals of Emacs is that an ordinary user shall be able to 
> compile and run a version for him/herself.  An ordinary user can't install 
> libXt-dev.

I'm in 100% agreement with Richard and Jan.  Too many a package makes
it horrendously hard to build it, by requiring you to install the
latest-and-the-greatest of each supporting package and library, then
the latest version, perhaps even a beta, of each dependency of those
support packages, etc. etc., ad nauseam.  I hope Emacs will never go
that way, and I'm certainly gonna lobby that it doesn't.

I vote for asking Autoconf maintainers to release 2.59.1 with this bug
fixed.