[darcs-devel] Re: darcs patch: Obey current GNU standard for docdir/datarootdir make ...

[Stephen J. Turnbull]

Dave Love writes:

 > "Stephen J. Turnbull" <stephen at xemacs.org> writes:
 > 
 > > Please, do not.  Specifically, autoconf 2.6x is known buggy for x =
 > > 0,1.
 > 
 > I'd guess all versions are known to be buggy somehow.

These are bugs that cause incorrect builds of other software.

 > > Installs of autoconf 2.6x will cause build problems for other
 > > applications with 100% correct configure.in.  It doesn't error, it
 > > simply produces an incorrect configure.
 > 
 > It seem unlikely to be a serious problem since 2.60 is 10 months old,

You don't consider tool-chain-induced corruption serious?  I certainly
do.

 > 2.61 is used by current Ubuntu and Debian, and 2.6x is required by
 > some GNU packages.  What are you talking about specifically, and
 > what's the status of the relevant bug reports?

Don't know exactly, not my bailiwick.  IIRC, the 2.60 problem was
resulting in a configure that failed to produce a configuration under
some circumstances.  The 2.61 problem was that the generated configure
produced a config.status that did not recheck with --recheck, thus
failing to recognize environmental changes.  I believe that these
problems are fixed in Autoconf CVS, but not in any released autoconf.

 > > AFAIK 2.59 is happy enough with datarootdir-correct configure.in, so
 > > there's no need to bump the require once you've fixed configure.in.
 > 
 > 2.59 knows nothing about datarootdir, so you can't trivially DTRT.

"First, do no harm."  Even before DTRTing.

The question here is, does 2.59 barf on 2.61-correct code, or does it
ignore it?  If it barfs, and Darcs wishes to conform to GNU standard,
that's a reason to bump the requirement.  However, I don't consider
non-conformance a serious problem for non-GNU software, and so I
recommend that Darcs not try to enforce use of 2.6x.

XEmacs has already dealt with the known problems, obviously.  I just
would prefer that Darcs not risk gratuitously imposing such pain on
other projects when the autotools have such a horrible record of
backward incompatibility.