Re: build tools standard

[James Henstridge <james daa com au>]

Dan Mills wrote:

> I am unconvinced that any module requires new functionality or a 
> bugfix that can't wait until the next gnome release. Assuming a 
> 6-month release schedule, that's an average of 3 months.  I think that 
> having a workaround for a few months is not an unreasonable thing to ask.

That sounds fair.  I just object to using tools that are 11 months old 
(autoconf) or 7 months old (automake) at the beginning of the 6 month 
period.

For comparison, the latest versions of autoconf and automake were 
released at the start of December.  I have been using both to build and 
release tarballs and they seem fairly solid.  They have added support 
for marking features deprecated in the new autoconf and automake 
releases, so using them should help developers make their build 
infrastructure forward compatible with newer releases.

If we do decide to stick to particular versions, I think it is 
definitely worth while testing out new versions of the tools when they 
come out.  If things break with the new versions and a fix can be 
produced that works with both the current and "standard" versions, then 
it should be applied.  If such a fix can't be produced, then 
compatibility with the "standard" version is probably more important.

I _really_ don't want to get to a point where we start 2.5 development 
and find updating to current build tools is impossible because we are 
relying on bugs in the old versions.

James.

--
Email: james daa com au
WWW:   http://www.daa.com.au/~james/