On Tuesday 22 November 2011, Dave Hart wrote:
> At the risk of repeating myself from the last time this question came
> up, let me selfishly say as a NTP maintainer that I do not look
> forward to NTP configure failing with a message indicating GNU make is
> required and could not be located. I have no appreciation for how
> much simpler and easier to maintain Automake might become with a shift
> from targetting portable make to requiring GNU make. I've never
> maintained Makefile or Makefile.am files in a GNU-make-only project.
> I do find it is sometimes easier to track down problems affecting both
> GNU make and more traditional implementations using a traditional make
> as the verbose debug output of GNU make is so much longer due to more
> implicit rules.
>
> It would be my inclination to stay with older Automake as long as
> feasible if newer Automake drops support for traditional make.
>
That should be feasible, since we should continue to support "classical
automake" for few years at least. Also, after these years, two scenarios
are possible:
1. "Automake 2" turns out to be a failure, it gets abandoned, and
"Automake 1" becomes again the center of all our developement
efforts. No problem for you, since you're still using this older
automake.
2. "Automake 2" is a success, and we drop support for Automake 1. At
this point, it shouldn't be too big a pain for you to convert to the
new automake (a good documentation about incompatibilities between,
and/or transition from, automake 1 and 2 should exist at this point).
Also, assuming that many other packages are using automake 2 by now,
and thus requiring GNU make, it should be much more acceptable for
the NTP build system to do the same.
> Harlan Stenn, who initially converted the NTP code to use Autoconf and
> Automake, likely has a different perspective which might well matter
> more than mine.
>
I think it would be premature to start discussing now about the
possibility of such a transition to the "new automake". Let's wait
at least until automake 2 isn't just wishful-thinking vaporware :-)
Regards,
Stefano
