This recent screw-up on my part in even the most minimal maintenance of the deprecated autotools build system, the zero testing we all gave that system afterwards, and the lack of a volunteer who wants to maintain or even test that system indicates to me that it is near the time when we should get rid of the autotools build system completely.
So the question I think we should decide now is when should we pull the plug on autotools? My own feeling is we have morally committed to including the autotools-based build system through at least our next stable release (5.8.0), but it's been deprecated for a while now so any time after the release of 5.8.0 is fair game so long as we give some advance notice. Thefore, I think immediately after 5.8.0 would be appropriate so that our first release in the 5.9.x series and all development and stable releases after that would exclude the autotools-related files. I am bringing up this issue now for discussion because if we do decide to eliminate the autotools-related files by 5.9.0, then we should give advance notice of that change in the (5.8.0-RC1 and) 5.8.0 release notes so that those users who are still using autotools will have a chance to try out the cmake-based build system in 5.8.0 to make sure it satisfies all their needs. Alan __________________________ Alan W. Irwin Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca). Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software package (plplot.org); the libLASi project (unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net). __________________________ Linux-powered Science __________________________ ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/ _______________________________________________ Plplot-devel mailing list Plplot-devel@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/plplot-devel
