Re: autoconf-2.68b released [beta]

[Eric Blake]

On 03/02/2012 10:02 AM, Rhys Ulerich wrote:
>>> On 03/02/2012 05:45 AM, Eric Blake wrote:
>>>> The Autoconf team is considering releasing only .xz files for 2.69;
>>>> if this would be a hardship for you, and you need the .gz or .bz2
>>>> release, please speak up now.
> 
> Would only having xz introduce a chicken-and-egg bootstrapping
> problem?  I notice xz-utils (http://tukaani.org/xz/) use Autoconf.

This is no more of a bootstrap problem than the fact that autoconf
depends on m4 and m4 uses Autoconf.

Remember, xz-utils and m4 can be installed from tarball without
requiring autoconf, because an autoconf-generated configure script
(which is what xz and m4 use in their tarballs) does not itself require
autoconf.

If you have a virgin system, with none of GNU m4, autoconf, nor xz
installed, then the solution is to install xz from tarball, m4 from
tarball, then autoconf from tarball.  That's good enough for most
people.  If you further want to contribute to any one of the three .git
projects, or use bleeding edge git builds, you now have enough installed
prerequisites to also bootstrap the git projects.

-- 
Eric Blake   address@hidden    +1-919-301-3266
Libvirt virtualization library http://libvirt.org

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