Re: mix several autoconf versions

[Dan Kegel]

Jonathan J. Vargas wrote:
> ive had several problems with some packages sources, cause they dunt get
> updated to the new autoconf versions, and therefore some macros and
> other things aren't found and i cant build that package. what i used to
> do is rebuild old autoconf versions each time i am gonna install a
> package which requires a lower autoconf version.
>
> i use to build several times different packages, and this is boring me.
> can i some way avoid this problem? so, i though about ix several
> autoconf versions.. is it possible ? or what da u think ?

This is exactly the issue I, Jens, and Havoc were posting about
yesterday.  Red Hat used to make this possible by installing
each version of autoconf as /usr/bin/autoconf-2.13, /usr/bin/autoconf-2.53, 
etc.,
with /usr/bin/autoconf being a symlink to the current version.
They *stopped* doing this with Red Hat 8.1, and made the latest
version only available as /usr/bin/autoconf (with no numbered version).

This drives users like me and Jonathan nuts, but the guys from Red Hat have a 
point,
because this problem *should not* be solved by the distributors.
Note that Cygwin and Debian also each try to solve this problem,
and each solves it in a totally different way.

Red Hat 8.1 *does* support versioned access to automake, precisely
because the automake team addressed the problem.  The autoconf
team should follow suit...
- Dan