[ On Tuesday, August 14, 2001 at 09:23:47 (-0400), Johnny C. Lam wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: ltconfig [was Re: CVS commit: pkgsrc/graphics/imlib] 
>
> No, we patch the configure.in file because we change some of the tests
> and those are the changes that software authors actually take back
> into their source trees as the configure script is a generated file.
> We've been doing that since the early days of pkgsrc.  Of course, this
> runs into problems only now that the fundamental GNU build tools
> (automake, autoconf, libtool) are undergoing changes.  We will have to
> add autoconf-2.50 to pkgsrc fairly soon, hopefully as a package that
> won't conflict with autoconf-2.13.

That'll be autoconf-2.52 (or whatever's current at the time), I hope...

> Given the current conditions with the GNU build tools undergoing
> updates and backward-incompatible changes,

Note that there should be no true "backward-incompatible" changes in
Autoconf.  New versions should always (at least within reason) properly
process old configure.in files.

As it turns out it'll be far more important to keep all the Auto* tools
(including libtool) in sync than it will be to worry about backwards
incompatability.

> we should probably only
> keep patches to the configure script in pkgsrc,

There is never any reason in pkgsrc to keep patches to the
autoconf-generated files, including and especially the configure script.

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

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