Re: [RFC] getting rid of the config.guess/sub problem when bootstrapping new ports/systems

[Adrian Bunk]

On Tue, Oct 09, 2012 at 09:27:46AM +0800, Paul Wise wrote:
> On Mon, 2012-10-08 at 12:26 -0700, Russ Allbery wrote:
> 
> > Personally, I've already started converting every package I maintain that
> > uses Autoconf to using dh_autoreconf during the build.
> 
> Likewise.
> 
> > I wonder if that isn't a better long-term solution for Debian.
> 
> It is, but for DFSG item 2 reasons rather than this. As a solution for
> this in Debian and outside Debian I don't think it scales as well.
> Within Debian we would need to make everything use debhelper and make
> debhelper do it by default, neither of which are likely. There are quite
> a few distros, including proprietary ones, so I don't think this
> approach scales outside of Debian either.
>...

One problem is that in new upstream versions of autoconf/automake/libtool
there are sometimes slight incompatibilities, and you end up with
shipping many different versions of each of these tools (even today 
Debian already ships 5 different versions of autoconf).

E.g. putting automake 1.13 [1] as automake package into Debian would 
then require updating thousands of packages just for getting the whole 
archive to build again.

> bye,
> pabs

cu
Adrian

[1] That will remove quite a few things marked as obsolete.

-- 

       "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out
        of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days.
       "Only a promise," Lao Er said.
                                       Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed