RFC: Changes to cygwin autotools packages

[Christopher Faylor]

On Mon, May 30, 2005 at 02:39:50PM -0400, Charles Wilson wrote:
>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?

Sounds right to me.

cgf