Frank Schafer wrote:
Why the hick are there so much versions of autoconf (in system)? Well,
somewhere in the [Nasty bug..] thread someone (again) mentioned, that
different packaged depend on different versions of autoconf. That's NOT
the truth for building a package.
Autoconf and automake provide tools to CREATE configure scripts. They
are completely unnecessary to BUILD or RUN the packages. I've built a
full featured LFS system some time ago without autoconf and automake
installed at all.
It is a good thing to have all these versions in portage for the case
someone wants to involve in development of a package, which will be
based on some version of the autoconf/automake double but IMHO they
shouldn't be part of system and if, then only one (the latest stable ;)
version.
By nature, a Gentoo installation features a fairly complete build and
development environment. The ebuilds for many packages modify the
"build-scripts" used to produce software releases, and these scripts must be
piped through autoconf/automake/etc for the Gentoo changes to take place. This
is not the case for all packages, but is true for a large number.
And yes, it is true that the different autoconf versions *are* incompatible
with each other, so there is a reason for installing a range of them alongside
each other.
Daniel
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