Re: coexist multiple versions of automake

[Allan Clark <allanc at caldera dot com>]

Paul Lew wrote:
> I would like to propose we modify automake (and autoconf) to allow
> multiple versions of automake coexisting on a given system.  In our
> work, we used various open source libraries and each one of them work
> with a particular version of automake.  This makes it hard for us to
> upgrade.  If automake can be specified as automake-1.4 and
> automake-1.6 like what tcl did in the past, this will make people's
> life a lot easier.

When you say "libraries", are you referring to libXXX.{a,so}, or "The
ABC Corp Widget Library" (a collection of libraries and non-standard
tools)?

Typically, changes in toolkits that cause huge inconsistencies are given
different major version numbers, but automake will probably be 1.X
forever.

Segmenting automake into automake-1.4/1.5/1.6 might be OK so long as
users have the choice of choosing "automake-X.y", or simply choosing
"automake" (which would continue to be the latest automake major
revision).  I for one like to install automake, and know that when my
check for updates yields "nothing new", my automake is the latest.


> Since I am not familiar with the inner work of automake, for the
> already released versions, how hard will it be to patch them to allow
> for this?  I would really like to have 2 libraries using different
> version of automake to work together.

Did you consider getting the libraries updated?  Yeah, you probably did.

This *is* an automake issue, and not a libtool issue, right?

Allan