Re: Beta release of gawk 5.1.1

[Neil R. Ormos]

arnold@skeeve.com wrote:
> "Neil R. Ormos" wrote:
>> Arnold Robbins wrote:

>>> This note is to announce the BETA release of
>>> GNU Awk 5.1.1. [...]
>>> Changes from 5.1.0 to 5.1.1
>>> 1. Infrastructure upgrades: Bison 3.8, Gettext 0.20.2,
>>> Automake 1.16.4, and (will wonders never cease)
>>> Autoconf 2.71.

>> Do you have any comment on the earliest release of
>> Debian GNU/Linux (stock or with Debian-supplied
>> backports) on which users should expect to be able
>> to build 5.1.1?

> I don't have any comment. Gawk uses facilities
> that have been in Linux for decades; it should
> be possible to backport it quite a ways, but I'm
> not going to do any experiments.

Thank you.

I was looking for an "if you happen to know" sort of answer, not anything that 
would require experimentation.

I was asking because I had been unable to build gawk using source from the 
publicly-advertised SCCS--perhaps git on savannah--on several occasions in the 
past.  It appeared that a couple of elements in the build process required 
versions of tools that were newer than what I had, running stock Debian 
(oldstable) at the time.  So I didn't know if I should expect to build on 
anything older than Debian Stable or "don't bother".

In any case, I had no trouble building gawk 5.1.1 from the tar archive you 
linked a few days ago, on systems running Debian Stretch (OldOldStable) and 
Debian Squeeze (Old^5 Stable).

Some other projects either require very recent versions of build tools or have 
adopted fancy new build systems.  Thanks for not doing that.