[AOLSERVER] [DEV] Changing required autoconf version
Everyone, I'd like to change the required version of autoconf required -- currently, AOLserver configure.in works with autoconf 2.13, but I'd like to move to configure.ac and autoconf 2.50+. Does anyone have any issues with this? -- Dossy -- Dossy Shiobara mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Panoptic Computer Network web: http://www.panoptic.com/ "He realized the fastest way to change is to laugh at your own folly -- then you can let go and quickly move on." (p. 70) -- AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/ To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> with the body of "SIGNOFF AOLSERVER" in the email message. You can leave the Subject: field of your email blank.
Re: [AOLSERVER] [DEV] Changing required autoconf version
Many relatively old (but not ancient) Linux distributions ship with autoconf 2.13 such as RedHat 7.2, 7,3 and AS 2.1. Upgrading isn't particularly painful but many only like using "official" rpms and AFAIK RedHat does not provide them. What is the advantage of upgrade? rob Dossy wrote: Everyone, I'd like to change the required version of autoconf required -- currently, AOLserver configure.in works with autoconf 2.13, but I'd like to move to configure.ac and autoconf 2.50+. Does anyone have any issues with this? -- Dossy -- Dossy Shiobara mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Panoptic Computer Network web: http://www.panoptic.com/ "He realized the fastest way to change is to laugh at your own folly -- then you can let go and quickly move on." (p. 70) -- AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/ To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> with the body of "SIGNOFF AOLSERVER" in the email message. You can leave the Subject: field of your email blank. -- AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/ To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> with the body of "SIGNOFF AOLSERVER" in the email message. You can leave the Subject: field of your email blank.
Re: [AOLSERVER] [DEV] Changing required autoconf version
On 2004.07.21, Rob Crittenden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Many relatively old (but not ancient) Linux distributions ship with > autoconf 2.13 such as RedHat 7.2, 7,3 and AS 2.1. Upgrading isn't > particularly painful but many only like using "official" rpms and AFAIK > RedHat does not provide them. http://www.redhat.com/swr/noarch/autoconf-2.57-3.noarch.html Since autotools are mostly Perl scripts (which means you *should* be able to install the latest autotools RPMs on even older RedHat systems), the biggest dependency for using newer autotools is to have the required version of Perl installed, and I'm sure RedHat makes available for even older distributions: http://www.redhat.com/swr/i386/perl-5.8.0-88.i386.html > What is the advantage of upgrade? Considering Autoconf 2.58 was released back in November 2003, I'm assuming it's stable by now. The advantage of upgrade at this point is to keep our build infrastructure fairly current. I'm also hoping to clean up the build infrastructure for Win32, and am hoping to leverage the autotools suite for this. Apparently there's a tool called "am2msdev" which can convert Automake .am files to MSVC++ project files. That might let us continue supporting Win32 builds without having to duplicate maintaining the autotools environment AND the MSVC++ project files separately. Another option is a wrapper script called "cccl" which translates gcc command line args to MSVC++ cl.exe args -- with that, we could build on Win32 using the existing autotools under Cygwin (so that we have gmake, etc.), which would be another good solution. So, I see two immediate advantages: keeping our build infrastructure relatively current, and making Win32 builds easier. -- Dossy -- Dossy Shiobara mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Panoptic Computer Network web: http://www.panoptic.com/ "He realized the fastest way to change is to laugh at your own folly -- then you can let go and quickly move on." (p. 70) -- AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/ To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> with the body of "SIGNOFF AOLSERVER" in the email message. You can leave the Subject: field of your email blank.
Re: [AOLSERVER] [DEV] Changing required autoconf version
Dossy wrote: I'd like to change the required version of autoconf required -- currently, AOLserver configure.in works with autoconf 2.13, but I'd like to move to configure.ac and autoconf 2.50+. Does anyone have any issues with this? Note that the Tcl core made the move to 2.50+ in 8.5 (the dev head). While I didn't like it at first (autoconf sucks in so many ways, no matter what version, and 2.50 had a whole new set of oddities), we have all gotten used to it. 2.50+ is the standard install for any recent Linux release. In truth, it actually has more features that could simplify configure files. However, it does take much longer to run and produces configure files that are several times the size of ac2.13 versions, which themselves take longer to run. More checks are made by default though, so I guess that's the cost of autoconf magic "progress". -- Jeff Hobbs, The Tcl Guy http://www.ActiveState.com/, a division of Sophos -- AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/ To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> with the body of "SIGNOFF AOLSERVER" in the email message. You can leave the Subject: field of your email blank.
Re: [AOLSERVER] [DEV] Changing required autoconf version
At Wednesday 07:23 AM 7/21/2004, you wrote: On 2004.07.21, Rob Crittenden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Many relatively old (but not ancient) Linux distributions ship with > autoconf 2.13 such as RedHat 7.2, 7,3 and AS 2.1. Upgrading isn't > particularly painful but many only like using "official" rpms and AFAIK > RedHat does not provide them. http://www.redhat.com/swr/noarch/autoconf-2.57-3.noarch.html That's a RedHat 9 RPM, not an Advanced Server 2.1 RPM. If you make this change, AOLserver will no longer be able to be built with RHAS 2.1 using stock/supported RPMs. And RHAS 2.1 is going to be around for quite some time--it's still the most stable and well-supported RedHat enterprise version, although vendors are gradually getting around to certifying their code on RedHat Enterprise Linux 3. Since autotools are mostly Perl scripts (which means you *should* be able to install the latest autotools RPMs on even older RedHat systems), the biggest dependency for using newer autotools is to have the required version of Perl installed, and I'm sure RedHat makes available for even older distributions: http://www.redhat.com/swr/i386/perl-5.8.0-88.i386.html The current supported version of Perl for RHAS 2.1 is 5.6.1. > What is the advantage of upgrade? Considering Autoconf 2.58 was released back in November 2003, I'm assuming it's stable by now. The advantage of upgrade at this point is to keep our build infrastructure fairly current. If that's the overriding advantage, I'd say the disadvantage of making RHAS 2.1 a more difficult environment on which to build AOLserver (if that in fact would be the result) outweighs it. - John -- AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/ To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> with the body of "SIGNOFF AOLSERVER" in the email message. You can leave the Subject: field of your email blank.
Re: [AOLSERVER] [DEV] Changing required autoconf version
On 2004.07.21, Jeff Hobbs <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Note that the Tcl core made the move to 2.50+ in 8.5 (the dev head). This is another reason to upgrade AOLserver to use autoconf 2.50+ -- since AOLserver's build uses Tcl's build as a basis, until we switch AOLserver to use autoconf 2.50+, we may not be able to build AOLserver against Tcl 8.5. > In truth, it actually has more features that could simplify configure > files. However, it does take much longer to run and produces > configure files that are several times the size of ac2.13 versions, > which themselves take longer to run. More checks are made by default > though, so I guess that's the cost of autoconf magic "progress". Yes, the speed and size issues are annoying, but presumably there are ways to turn a lot of the default checks off, I hope. -- Dossy -- Dossy Shiobara mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Panoptic Computer Network web: http://www.panoptic.com/ "He realized the fastest way to change is to laugh at your own folly -- then you can let go and quickly move on." (p. 70) -- AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/ To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> with the body of "SIGNOFF AOLSERVER" in the email message. You can leave the Subject: field of your email blank.
Re: [AOLSERVER] [DEV] Changing required autoconf version
> > Note that the Tcl core made the move to 2.50+ in 8.5 (the dev head). > > This is another reason to upgrade AOLserver to use autoconf > 2.50+ -- since AOLserver's build uses Tcl's build as a basis, > until we switch AOLserver to use autoconf 2.50+, we may not > be able to build AOLserver against Tcl 8.5. I don't see why that's an issue really - only if you ever need to regenerate the core Tcl stuff. It comes with a ready-made configure that should work for AOLServer build variants. Jeff -- AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/ To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> with the body of "SIGNOFF AOLSERVER" in the email message. You can leave the Subject: field of your email blank.
Re: [AOLSERVER] [DEV] Changing required autoconf version
On 2004.07.21, John Caruso <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >http://www.redhat.com/swr/noarch/autoconf-2.57-3.noarch.html > > That's a RedHat 9 RPM, not an Advanced Server 2.1 RPM. Excuse my RedHat ignorance, but could you explain the difference? Will this RPM not install on RHAS 2.1 at all? Is it because of unmet dependencies, or something else? > The current supported version of Perl for RHAS 2.1 is 5.6.1. Reviewing the autotools code, there's nothing that requires a specific version of Perl. It *appears* as though the Perl code should work fine with Perl 5.6.1. I don't have 5.6.1 installed, but I do have 5.005.03 installed to test: $ autoconf2.50 configure.in > configure.250 $ perl5.00503 /usr/bin/autom4te --language=autoconf \ --output=configure.oldperl "" configure.in $ diff configure.250 configure.oldperl | wc -l 0 No difference based on what version of Perl is used. However, autotools heavily relies on M4. So: $ m4 --version GNU m4 1.4.1 What's the newest version of M4 supported on RHAS 2.1? > >> What is the advantage of upgrade? > > > >Considering Autoconf 2.58 was released back in November 2003, I'm > >assuming it's stable by now. The advantage of upgrade at this point > >is to keep our build infrastructure fairly current. > > If that's the overriding advantage, I'd say the disadvantage of making > RHAS 2.1 a more difficult environment on which to build AOLserver (if that > in fact would be the result) outweighs it. It actually wouldn't be: we'd still distribute the generated "configure" script for folks to run, which *should* be platform-neutral and not use any features not commonly available (i.e., backwards compatible) across all the platforms that autotools claims to support. It COULD make developing AOLserver itself slightly more difficult if one couldn't change the source scripts that feed autotools because you couldn't re-run all the autotools stuff to regenerate the configure script, etc., but perhaps that's a non-issue. -- Dossy -- Dossy Shiobara mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Panoptic Computer Network web: http://www.panoptic.com/ "He realized the fastest way to change is to laugh at your own folly -- then you can let go and quickly move on." (p. 70) -- AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/ To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> with the body of "SIGNOFF AOLSERVER" in the email message. You can leave the Subject: field of your email blank.
Re: [AOLSERVER] [DEV] Changing required autoconf version
On 2004.07.21, Jeff Hobbs <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I don't see why that's an issue really - only if you ever need > to regenerate the core Tcl stuff. It comes with a ready-made > configure that should work for AOLServer build variants. At some point, AOLserver's build was relying on Tcl source. See "aclocal.m4" in the AOLserver source tree: ...comments snipped... builtin(include,../tcl8.4/unix/tcl.m4) Upon closer inspection, the aclocal.m4 file seems to be entirely unnecessary now, since AOLserver builds and that path to tcl.m4 is wrong (at least on my machine) -- the installed version lives in /usr/lib/tcl8.4/tcl.m4. So, yes, it appears that Tcl's version of autotools isn't a dependency for AOLserver. -- Dossy -- Dossy Shiobara mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Panoptic Computer Network web: http://www.panoptic.com/ "He realized the fastest way to change is to laugh at your own folly -- then you can let go and quickly move on." (p. 70) -- AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/ To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> with the body of "SIGNOFF AOLSERVER" in the email message. You can leave the Subject: field of your email blank.
Re: [AOLSERVER] [DEV] Changing required autoconf version
At Wednesday 11:40 AM 7/21/2004, you wrote: On 2004.07.21, John Caruso <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >http://www.redhat.com/swr/noarch/autoconf-2.57-3.noarch.html > > That's a RedHat 9 RPM, not an Advanced Server 2.1 RPM. Excuse my RedHat ignorance, but could you explain the difference? RedHat split off its "enterprise" operating systems (supported and fee-based) from its free operating systems. AS 2.1 was the first enterprise release (roughly based on RH 7.3), and RHEL 3 is the current release (roughly equivalent to RH9). RH9 is either not supported now, or will soon be desupported, as are all other non-enterprise RedHat OS releases. Future free RedHat offerings will all be based around Fedora. Will this RPM not install on RHAS 2.1 at all? Is it because of unmet dependencies, or something else? It might or it might not--some RH9 RPMs works on RHAS 2.1, some don't. The same applies to RH7.3 RPMs, even though those tend to be more closely compatible with RHAS 2.1. In fact sometimes it's not even possible to build RHAS 2.1 RPMs from RH9 source RPMs (without sometimes extensive tweaking). The problems can include dependencies, differences in underlying libraries (glibc), and so on. > If that's the overriding advantage, I'd say the disadvantage of making > RHAS 2.1 a more difficult environment on which to build AOLserver (if that > in fact would be the result) outweighs it. It actually wouldn't be: we'd still distribute the generated "configure" script for folks to run, which *should* be platform-neutral and not use any features not commonly available (i.e., backwards compatible) across all the platforms that autotools claims to support. Ah, ok. I think that'd be fine--if people have to update autoconf to develop AOLserver, that's probably not as much of an issue, so long as it will still build on the majority of platforms. - John -- AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/ To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> with the body of "SIGNOFF AOLSERVER" in the email message. You can leave the Subject: field of your email blank.
Re: [AOLSERVER] [DEV] Changing required autoconf version
On Wednesday 21 July 2004 14:40, Dossy wrote: > On 2004.07.21, John Caruso <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > >http://www.redhat.com/swr/noarch/autoconf-2.57-3.noarch.html > > That's a RedHat 9 RPM, not an Advanced Server 2.1 RPM. > Excuse my RedHat ignorance, but could you explain the difference? Will > this RPM not install on RHAS 2.1 at all? Is it because of unmet > dependencies, or something else? RHAS 2.1 is based off of RH 7.2, which is substantially older than RHL9. However, the RHL7.3 version SRPMS should rebuild with little to no problems: see ftp://ftp.redhat.com/pub/redhat/linux/7.3/en/os/i386/SRPMS/autoconf253-2.53-3.src.rpm for the source rpm to feed rpmbuild --rebuild. The 7.3 RPM itself might install with no problems on RHAS2.1. The advantages of this RPM is that it can coexist with the 2.13 version; you call it as autoconf-253 instead of just autoconf (I've had to deal with this with PostgreSQL). -- Lamar Owen Director of Information Technology Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute 1 PARI Drive Rosman, NC 28772 (828)862-5554 www.pari.edu -- AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/ To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> with the body of "SIGNOFF AOLSERVER" in the email message. You can leave the Subject: field of your email blank.
Re: [AOLSERVER] [DEV] Changing required autoconf version
On Wed, Jul 21, 2004 at 07:16:50AM -0400, Dossy wrote: > Everyone, > > I'd like to change the required version of autoconf required -- > currently, AOLserver configure.in works with autoconf 2.13, but I'd like > to move to configure.ac and autoconf 2.50+. > > Does anyone have any issues with this? > For what I can say about debian, we distribute both 2.13 and 2.59 series. They are well-known as incompatible when used in maintainer mode. The best thing to do is avoiding the maintainer mode at all for final builders and that's all. None should need to run autoconf in order to configure and compile the distributed program. I could also suggest to use the most recent one due to some gotchas in ancient versions of 2.5. All this is of course true for incoming sarge. -- Francesco P. Lovergine -- AOLserver - http://www.aolserver.com/ To Remove yourself from this list, simply send an email to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> with the body of "SIGNOFF AOLSERVER" in the email message. You can leave the Subject: field of your email blank.
