Subject: Re: CVS commit: pkgsrc/net/mtr
To: NetBSD Packages Technical Discussion List <tech-pkg@netbsd.org>
From: Greg A. Woods <woods@weird.com>
List: tech-pkg
Date: 10/25/2001 15:28:37
[ On Thursday, October 25, 2001 at 14:15:07 (-0500), Frederick Bruckman wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: CVS commit: pkgsrc/net/mtr
>
> The only problem with that, is that some of those tools aren't
> backwards compatible, so when we finally succumb to updating
> "autoconf/automake", we'll have a whole bunch of broken packages if we
> don't lose the build-time dependencies first.

Yes, I very intimately aware of that issue (having myself created one
such not-quite-compatible variant of autoconf).

The correct solution though is not to "break" packages, nor to avoid
using the build tools they were designed with -- rather it's to find a
proper way to simultaneously have installed, and be able to comfortably
use, multiple different variants of such tools.  I do realise that the
GNU Auto* tools are particularly nasty in this regard (despite my
attempts to "encourage" them to integrally support such capability[*]), but
they are not impossible to use in this manner.

[*] their goal of course has always been full backwards compatability in
the GNU Auto* suite, but of course that's an impossible dream to realise.

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098      VE3TCP      <gwoods@acm.org>     <woods@robohack.ca>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>;   Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>