bug#13435: Please don't kill DJGPP support...

[Stefano Lattarini]

Severity: wishlist

Reference:
<http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/automake/2013-01/msg00050.html>

I'm moving this discussion to bug-automake, so that is will be registered
in our bug tracker, for easier future reference.

On 01/13/2013 08:22 PM, DJ Delorie wrote:
> The DJGPP project is still quite alive, with most GNU projects having
> up to date builds for DJGPP.
>
But is it really useful today?  That is, Unix emulation under MS systems
means MinGW/MSYS or Cygwin today.  And while DJGPP was a tremendous help
and an amazing piece of software back in its heydays, I'm not sure it is
really relevant anymore now (apart for its aficionados, but that could be
said for almost any good software).

> Since the DJGPP project relies heavily
> on being able to build the GNU projects, dropping support in Automake
> means that any project updating their Automake scripts will be forced
> to drop DJGPP support, whether the project desires that or not.
> 
> If such a trend continues, the Automake team will have effectively
> killed off the whole DJGPP project single-handedly.
> 
> Is there any particular reason why support might be dropped?
>
The main reason were two:

  1. the perceived (on my part) irrelevance DJGPP today, and

  2. the extra complexity introduced by the need of supporting its
    '.iNN' info files.

But now that Automake is planned to drop support for split info files
anyway (see <debbugs.gnu.org/13351>), that second motivation might
as well have become irrelevant.  And the other pieces of code required
to support DJGPP are few and unobtrusive enough that I can consider
re-introducing them if I get convinced DJGPP is not truly irrelevant
yet.

So, in a few days, I hope to be able to push to Automake's git
repository an experimental branch that incorporates the changes
removing support for split info files, *and* reverts some of
the changes where I dropped DJGPP support (that is, all but the
Texinfo-related ones).  If that is enough to make DJGPP support
work again (you or some other interested party will have to test
this is the case), then I will consider re-introducing that
support.

Regards,
  Stefano