Karl wrote: > I fully recognize that people are still running Solaris 7 (and probably > older versions) on mission-critical and other systems. But, how many of > those systems are (a) installing brand-new GNU packages (which > presumably wouldn't be happening on mission-critical systems) *and* > (b) have *not* previously installed coreutils/sh-utils? I may be missing a key bit here. The issue is that somebody may be *upgrading* a previously-installed package. >From my POV, as long as one can bootstrap to the point where there is a sufficient base of utilities, all is well. As an aside, I remember there used to be a bunch of GNU utilities that had not been updated in a Long Time, and it always bothered me that when new versions of automake/autoconf were available that these other utilities were not upgraded to use them. Newer versions of autoconf sometimes fixed bugs and sometimes (better) detected system vagaries. They also sometimes made it much easier to support or allow for things like cross-compiling. Newer versions of automake sometimes fixed bugs and sometimes added significant usability items, especially regarding package installation. If a system is in production, one needs to be able to get new packages installed on it, and different systems different levels of "bootstrap" issues will crop up. I suspect we all know this, but I want to be sure the bootstrap issue is actively considered in all of this, as it as been my experience all too often that somebody at point A will make an assumption about the "foundation" at point B (and perhaps not test it), and then somebody else will make an assumption at point B about the "foundation" at point A (and perhaps not test it), and then when reality bites, it is discovered that with the newer releases of software, "we can't get there from here". H _______________________________________________ Autoconf mailing list Autoconf@xxxxxxx http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/autoconf
