Re: What did AM_ ever do to you?

[Kerrick Staley]

What I meant previously was:

Automake renamed some macros and dropped support for the older versions
(AM_CONFIG_HEADER -> AC_CONFIG_HEADERS and AM_PROG_MKDIR_P
-> AC_PROG_MKDIR_P come to mind). This is bad because it breaks every
single open source project in existence (break ALL the builds), for reasons
that most developers don't want to have to think about (writing code is
fun; worry about how to build it is less fun).

I'm sure there were legitimate technical reasons for the renaming, but I
think it would've been better overall if you had kept the deprecated
namings indefinitely—a little extra work on your part, but much less stress
for everyone else. Just my 2c worth.

- Kerrick


On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 1:09 AM, Kerrick Staley <address@hidden>wrote:

> For unknown reasons, Automake seems to have decided to deprecate symbols
> of the form AM_* in favor of symbols of the form AC_*. The suffix is the
> same, the semantics are the same; the only difference is the one little
> character. In light of this, I ask: What did AM_ ever do to you? What makes
> you ostracize him, cast him out, leave him by the way, dispose of him as
> one would a soiled rag? Imagine the poor tortured soul, his last remnants
> slowly expunged from once-working configure.ac's by so many bag-eyed,
> weary developers, each no more eager at his task than his victim, all
> carrying out a vicious crusade brought about by that proclamation, that
> damning order from on-high: "Warning: The AM_* macro is deprecated, and
> will soon be removed.". What has AM_ done to warrant this hell?
>
> - Kerrick
>