On 22.3.2018 14:48, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
On Thu, 22 Mar 2018, Matěj Týč wrote:
On 21.3.2018 22:34, Bob Friesenhahn wrote:
...
Majority of packages that use Autotools are C/C++ libraries, and they
may want to build bindings for Python. As Python2 is the only
supported Python e.g. in RHEL7, but it is also possible to obtain
Python3, there will be demand for this for years and years to come as
for the developer, supporting bindings for multiple Python major
versions is a relatively cheap task.
RHEL7 is very conservative. I have heard that some major
distributions are now standardizing/defaulting to Python3, although
they allow installing Python2.
You are right, there will be an effort to default to Python3, but there
will be lots of cases when some people will go for Python2 and others
for Python3 support of a piece of software.
...
Again, the main target group is library developers providing
bindings. Projects with lots of Python code will not use Autotools at
all. Therefore, it is not so much about capping the version, but it
is about distinguishing that there may be more than one major Python
version that needs to be dealt with in the build and install process.
You make a good point that it is possible that a package will want to
discover multiple Python versions and build extensions for each
version found. Is this something you would like to support?
The question to be answered is if updating Automake's macro is the
best course (requiring updating Automake to the version providing the
macro in order to use it) or if a macro in something like the Autoconf
macro archive is the safer approach.
Yes, this is exactly what I would like to achieve. And I would like to
stress out that it is not about the macro - although the macro is
essential, other parts of Automake besides m4 macros have to be
accommodated, as I have pointed out in my previous mails (tl;dr -
compiling Python script). Main users of Python Automake support are
developers of C/C++ libraries that provide Python bindings, typically
using SWIG. The Nate's post exactly illustrates that.
A stable distribution may not want to update the Automake version for
a few years but they might also want to re-autotool packages while
building them. In this case, a cached .m4 file with the macro will
still work while depending on a macro from a latest Automake won't
work because the distribution has chosen not to be up to date.
I may not understand what you meant correctly - I see there are
conservative distributions, but if I want my software to work well to
develop for them, I will want to use up-to-date automake to benefit from
it. It will make my software package work better on those distributions,
but I can develop it on a more bleeding-edge distro s.a. Archlinux or
Fedora.
