Here's a quote from "another list" that illustrates a problem with the
auto* approach to release mgt:
> I'm looking at trying to get autoconf to detect the right version of
> BDB (need to export some SVN_FS_GOT_DB_MAJOR variants), and getting
> the checks just right probably exceeds my amount of free time that I
> can dedicate to this.
The graph of interproject dependencies, including version-specific
dependencies, is very complex -- bordering on intractable. It
impedes people from using and contributing to projects. It raises the
cost of building distributions.
The de facto bootstrap tools don't have that problem -- they don't
depend on much at all. Supporting their builds is an entirely
different problem from supporting the builds of everything else.
One fork for those bootstrap projects -- another for everything else.
-t