On Sat, Jun 08, 2002 at 02:13:10AM -0400, Eric Dorland wrote: > > One possibility is to make "automake1.4.deb" be the only package that > > provides "automake", and then adjust the conflicts between automake > > 1.4 and automake 1.5 to ensure they don't get installed together if it > > breaks things. If we've got three versions of automake, which aren't > > particularly compatible, and which are all used widely, there's probably > > not that much value in trying to provide a "canonical" automake.deb. > > Yes, but that seems like a bit of an inelegant solution, since it is > possible for a package to want any automake, not necessarily > automake1.4. It is possible to write Makefile.am's that are portable > across all the current versions. It would be nice if packages which > depend on automake could depend on the right version (eg. automake1.4 > or automake1.5) if it really does depend on a specific version. Any package I use (and therefore can test) which does not build with automake 1.5 or 1.6 in sid, I will be happy to download, fix, and send patches both to the Debian BTS and upstream if possible. This goes for autoconf 2.5+ as well. If others are willing to do the same, I think it's a safe bet that we can move to 1.6 relatively easily. I say relatively because some of the things that are no longer acceptable to the autoconf/automake people were needed to get certain unprovided features in a sane manner. Programs which do anything like this are rare enough though that most people won't have any trouble. The exceptions may take some texinfo reading or some person who is basically very comfortable with auto* voodoo, but I'm convinced we could make short work of it. > > There's probably no need for a dummy package -- they're only really > > useful when you're splitting a package. > > Yes, but it might be nice for someone to do apt-get install automake > and get a nice version of automake installed. I realize that's > somewhat low priority, but it would still be nice :) First thing that needs to happen in order to get that is for someone with bandwidth and CPU to burn to set up an autobuilder and try building anything that needs automake with 1.5/1.6 and generate a list of failure cases. Once we have that, this whole process gets simpler. I don't have the bandwidth (56k shared by 5 machines just isn't at all sufficient!) but I have CPU enough to go about fixing the failure cases once they're known. -- Joseph Carter <knghtbrd@bluecherry.net> <-- That boy needs therapy * m2 stares at the monitor... it looks like a hamburger... <Knghtbrd> m2 - that's a bad sign
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