Re: proposal to fork the build-tools projects

[Tom Lord]

Here's a quote from "another list" that illustrates a problem with the
auto* approach to release mgt:

       > I'm looking at trying to get autoconf to detect the right version of 
       > BDB (need to export some SVN_FS_GOT_DB_MAJOR variants), and getting 
       > the checks just right probably exceeds my amount of free time that I 
       > can dedicate to this.

The graph of interproject dependencies, including version-specific
dependencies, is very complex -- bordering on intractable.   It
impedes people from using and contributing to projects.  It raises the
cost of building distributions.

The de facto bootstrap tools don't have that problem -- they don't
depend on much at all.   Supporting their builds is an entirely
different problem from supporting the builds of everything else.
One fork for those bootstrap projects -- another for everything else.


-t