Polite question for 3.81rc release

[Pavel Pisa]

Hello all,

I am politely asking, when we can expect packaging
of 3.81 or 3.81rcX. I have fall into unpleasant trap,
because we need to compile big set of libraries,
utilities, modules, etc. for Linux user-space, Linux kernel
and RT-Linux. I have build Makefile.rules, which reasonably solves
our needs. The actual makefiles are then very simple
and have almost same syntax as AutoMake Makefile.am files.
I have pass work with expansion of variables to rules
onto shoulders of make program. I have used features eval and call
described in documentation of make 3.80. My proposal worked well for initial
tests but the make 3.80 prove to be fundamentally broken when
rules has been used for real, growing project. Actual CVS version works
well and fixes all our problems, but we (and mainly other project members)
are not happy, that we will need to provide users with our unreliable
packaging of make.

The example of the rules, which are able to compile without pollution
of sources directory to user-space, Linux kernel and RT-Linux 
can be found at 

http://cvs.sourceforge.net/viewcvs.py/ocera/ocera/components/comm/can/

Rules solve libraries, headers and program linking dependencies
and should work even with parallel make.

The change of make system to work with version 3.80 would take
really long time, which I personally cannot afford.

I have updated hacked archive with working CVS version of make at

  http://cmp.felk.cvut.cz/~pisa/can/make-040302.tar.gz

But we have big problems with this workaround now,
when OCERA (http://www.ocera.org) project release time
is coming. I hopped from some rumours, that new version
of make could be released in 04Q1. I would be very happy
even for official pre-release package.

Many thanks for your support and answer

                Pavel Pisa
        e-mail: address@hidden
        www:    http://cmp.felk.cvut.cz/~pisa