Re: Reautoconfing

[Wookey]

On 2020-12-20 13:37 -0800, Paul Eggert wrote:
> On 12/20/20 12:25 PM, Wookey wrote:
> > We realise that it was/is not the autotools design, but that design
> > only works well when the auto* bits get updated reasonably often.
> 
> Yes, the design assumes that Autoconf etc. are maintained well, which
> (except for Zack's efforts) has not been the case for a while. This part of
> the GNU ecosystem needs more help, as the rare volunteers are spread way too
> thin.

Just to clarify here: I was talking about software projects that _use_
autotools being very infrequently updated, not autotools itself. Even
if autotools was being updated assiduously that doesn't change a
tarball last released 10 years ago, still being built in a modern
distro. Nor projects that do new releases but don't reautoconf
themselves and just cargo cult the autofoo they had working from last
time, which I have also seen way too much of.

I realise that my comment could in fact be read either way - apologies
for lack of clarity.  No criticism was implied of the people keeping
autotools itself going.

Wookey
-- 
Principal hats:  Linaro, Debian, Wookware, ARM
http://wookware.org/

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