Unknown `--is-lightweight' option

[kardan <kardan@riseup.net>]

Hi,

Maybe this is too specific for most users, but many developers read
here as well I think.

Compiling several projects I see

Unknown '--is-lightweight' option
Try '.../missing --help' for more information
configure: WARNING: 'missing' script is too old or missing

The solution I used locally was to copy 
  /usr/share/automake-1.13/missing to the source tree.

There also is 
  /usr/share/libtool/config/missing

which differs and only the one of automake contains

  --is-lightweight)
    # Used by our autoconf macros to check whether the available missing
    # script is modern enough.
    exit 0
    ;;

I wondered because the debian VCS [1] version was last updated in 2012
for 1.4 and the quoted missing script cannot be found there. Also
lintian reports the VCS field is wrong, among others.

The upstream commit message [2] of June 2012 for 1.13 is interesting:

* m4/missing.m4 (AM_MISSING_HAS_RUN): Enhance the test on '$MISSING' to
  ensure it actually provides the new semantics (by trying the new
  "witness" option '--is-lightweight')

+* Automatic remake rules and 'missing' script:
+
+ - The 'missing' script does not try anymore to update the timestamp
+ of out-of-date files that require a maintainer-specific tool to be
+ remade, in case the user lacks such a tool (or has a too-old version
+ of it). It just give a useful warning, and in some cases also a tip
+ about how to obtain such a tool.
+
+ - The missing script has thus become useless as a (poor) way to work
+ around the sketched-timestamps issues that can happen for projects
+ that keep generated files committed in their VCS repository. Such
+ projects are now encouraged to write a custom "fix-timestamps.sh"
+ script to avoid such issues; a simple example is provided in the
+ "CVS and generated files" chapter of the automake manual.

My actual question: should I bother the developers of those projects to
update their missing script and all build files accordingly? Think this
is a quest of friendly motivation then.

Thanks!
Kardan

[1]
http://anonscm.debian.org/gitweb/?p=users/eric/automake.git;a=shortlog;h=refs/heads/master
[2]
http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/automake.git/commit/?id=a22717dffe37f30ef2ad2c355b68c9b3b5e4b8c7