Re: How to cvs checkout SASL

[Carson Gaspar <carson@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Howard Chu wrote:
> Yes, but there's a difference between a developer and a package 
> maintainer. Since the configure script depends on specific versions of 
> the autotools, and the requirements differ for different packages, the 
> package maintainers ought to create these files and keep them with the 
> rest of the source code. As it is I have to maintain 5 different 
> versions of autoconf on my machine because of dependencies of this sort.

I understand both positions, and I thing my feelings can be expressed as 
follows:

If autoconf/automake/libtool had functional backwards compatibility, 
there would be no need to generated files in CVS. Sadly, they break 
features on a whim at every single point release. As I see it, there are 
really only 2 choices:

A) Clearly document the auto* tool versions used for the project and 
require all developers / testers to use only these tool versions. It 
would be helpful if the development team use some vaguely recent tool 
versions (the current auto* toolchain in use for releases is ancient and 
broken, especially libtool).

B) Re-generate the auto* generated files and check them into CVS 
(preferably via some automated method to lower developer check-in effort).

(B) will encourage testing. (B) has some modest additional effort on the 
part of the maintainers. (A) is a purist approach, and places the burden 
on the testers.

If the maintainers decide to stick to the current plan, please document 
the version requirements. At the moment I only see versions in 
doc/macosx.html.

--
Carson