RFC: Changes to cygwin autotools packages

[Charles Wilson]

It's been almost four years since I rolled out a wrapper-script solution 
to the autotool version conflict problem.  In that time, many packages 
have completed their migration from autoconf-2.13 to autoconf-2.5x. 
Also, the automake team has worked hard to maintain same-system-install 
cooperation between different versions of automake.  And finally, 
libtool-1.4p5 has almost disappeared from use -- any package still using 
a 1.4p5-DERIVED version of libtool has been forced to make so many 
custom modifications that they can hardly be considered the "standard" 
1.4p5 release anyway.

In short, most of the needs addressed by the overly complicated wrapper 
scripts and /usr/autotool/{devel|stable} installation have been obsoleted.

So, I'm proposing to scrap (most of) the wrappers and the 
/usr/autotool/{devel|stable} stuff, and follow the path taken by the 
major distributions (Red Hat, Mandrake^WMandrive, Debian) -- a path that 
did not exist when cygwin came up with its own solution.

Features:
(1) autoconf2.1-2.13 package installed into /usr/* but suffixed: 
autoconf-2.13, autoheader-2.13, etc.
(2) autoconf2.5-2.59 package installed into /usr/* but suffixed:
autoconf-2.59, autom4te-2.59, etc.
(3) a single wrapper script with symlinks from /usr/bin/autoconf, 
/usr/bin/autom4te, etc, that dispatches to the correct versioned program 
of the symlinked name, based on the contents of configure.in and/or 
environment variables.

(4) side-by-side installs of automake1.5-1.5.x, automake1.6-1.6.x, 
automake1.7-1.7.x, automake1.8-1.8.x, and automake1.9-1.9.x.  All 
binaries are versioned.
(5) an /etc/alternatives/-like symlink system for the "unversioned" 
automake, aclocal, binaries

(6) only one installation of libtool at this time, but perhaps more when 
the libtool team figures out how to enable side-by-side installs.  The 
"one" installed version will be 1.5.18 with cygwin fixes.

There are a few drawbacks to this plan, but the major benefits are:
(a) more similar to existing linux installation styles
(b) easier to maintain for me -- which means more frequent updates
(c) less confusing for new users and folks 'crossing over' from linux
(c) we can stop being the red-headed-stepchild of the autotool world 
"This works thusly, except on cygwin because of their wierd installation"

Comments?

--
Chuck