>>>>> "Russ" == Russ Allbery <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Great thread people! I'm happy to see you're alive :) Russ> There were a variety of reasons for breaking backward Russ> compatibility, like choosing to clean up quoting, but that's a Russ> justification for doing it, not an argument that it didn't Russ> happen. It very clearly did happen. Calling the autoconf Russ> scripts that worked in autoconf 2.13 but not in 2.5x "broken" is Russ> a deflection that I'd be more sympathetic to if the ways in Russ> which they were "broken" were clearly documented in autoconf Russ> 2.13, but they weren't. Which means that the language Russ> definition was changed (to something much more precise, mind), Russ> not that scripts that followed the previous language definition Russ> such as it was were broken. I don't want to dive into this debate, and I think that Russ' summary is very satisfying in that it exposes the point of view of all the parties. Whatever your opinion is, this debate is anyway a total loss of time for all of us (except for having the opportunity of reading the few usual good laughs from TEDdy Bear, the great clown of our mailing lists) since Autoconf will not be more 2.13 compatible in the future. If people consider we deliberatedly broken bugward compatibility, then fine, you're free to be wrong. It's not what happened (and I can tell you that a lot of code would not have been written if that was our intention), but I don't care what people think wrt this now, because... Because today the only reasonable attitude is asking ourselves how can we help people making the move. I worked *immensely* on autoupdate, it took me days to write such a complex tool. I wrote documentation explaining proper Autoconf programming. I added sections to ease the transition. I made public calls for people looking for help. I'm ready to do more, but please, tell me what is needed.
