On Thu, Mar 27, 2014 at 11:25:29AM +0100, Svante Signell wrote:
> Of course not, but what's hindering upgrading the build system tools
> when new source versions are released. And again, will the autotools
> ever be backwards compatible?
The autotools required versions change over time, but always require
effort of some build system maintainer or other volunteer to test that
things will work well with the new autotools, porting what needs to be
ported to the new version etc.
The requirement that everybody uses the same versions to regenerate files
has also another advantage, that there are no significant and sometimes
disruptive changes in the generated files, say if one committer would
regenerate with autoconf 2.69, then another with 2.64, another with 2.68,
another with 2.65, then often there are huge changes in the generated files
caused by the differences in the autotools.
Jakub
