On Thu, 2014-03-27 at 10:10 +0000, Jonathan Wakely wrote: > On 27 March 2014 09:35, Svante Signell wrote: > > - In an ideal situation no generated files should be shipped with a > > distribution, i.e. only configure.ac and Makefile.am, no configure, > > Makefile.in Makefile when not needed! > > But then end users need to have the autotools installed.
I'm talking about people building packages from source, how many end users do that? The people building from source are either developers or package maintainers and the have these tools installed, for sure. > Installing alternative versions of the autotools should not be so > difficult for people who are capable of patching the GCC source. Of course not, but what's hindering upgrading the build system tools when new source versions are released. And again, will the autotools ever be backwards compatible?
