[Python-Dev] Bumping autoconf from 2.68 to 2.69

[Toshio Kuratomi]

On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 11:27:24AM +0200, Antoine Pitrou wrote:
> On Tue, 16 Oct 2012 05:05:23 -0400
> Trent Nelson <trent at snakebite.org> wrote:
> > On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 01:43:37AM -0700, Charles-François Natali wrote:
> > > > My understanding is that we use a specific version of autoconf.
> > > > The reason is that otherwise we end up with useless churn in the repo
> > > > as the generated file changes when different committers use different
> > > > versions.  In the past we have had issues with a new autoconf version
> > > > actually breaking the Python build, so we also need to test a new version
> > > > before switching to it.
> > > 
> > > Well, so I guess all committers will have to use the same
> > > Linux/FreeBSD/whatever distribution then?
> > > AFAICT there's no requirement regarding the mercurial version used by
> > > committers either.
> > 
> >     Autoconf is a special case though.  Different versions of autoconf
> >     produce wildly different outputs for 'configure', making it impossible
> >     to vet configure.ac changes by reviewing the configure diff.
> 
> Isn't it enough to review the configure.ac diff?
> 
That's the ideal but it's been wrong in the past and may possibly be wrong
in the future as well.

Anecdotally, in the Linux distribution I package for we have a conversation
about whether we should apply patches to configure.ac and then run
autoreconf (or equivalent) or include the patches to ocnfigure about once
a year.  Although the latter has been pretty stable for several autoconf
version updates enough people have bad memories of those times when bumping
autoconf revisions that there's always a vocal contingent who advocate
shipping patches to the actual configure scripts (they're under the
impression the package maintainer will actually audit the configure patch
that autoconf generated to see if there's breakage that way).

-Toshio
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 198 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://mail.python.org/pipermail/python-dev/attachments/20121016/1eef72f5/attachment.pgp>