On 11/21/2011 09:56 PM, Stefano Lattarini wrote:
Here is my tentative plan to act on the proposal:
1. We start requiring GNU make in an "experimental" automake 2.0
development line (which might, and will, break whathever
backward-compatibility gets in its way).
2. Concurrently, we continue to support the more portable (and
tested, and used-in-the-real-world) 1.x line, with bugfixes
at least (and probably also with addition of new not-too-big
features).
3. We publicize this move in the automake (1.x) web pages,
documentation, etc, inviting users and developers to try out
the new "automake 2.0 pre-alpha", and to send cricisims,
suggestions, praise and ranting to the automake lists.
4. Time and user responses decide wether automake 2.0 will
succeed or die out.
WDYT?
It seems very hard to be successful and break backwards-compatibility.
When we introduced shell functions into Autoconf, and in general updated
Autoconf/M4sh/libtool for relatively new shells (new = newer than
Ultrix), it was successful exactly because no one noticed!
Paolo
