Re: [ANNOUNCEMENT] Updated: autoconf-15-1, autoconf2.7-2.71-1

[Ken Brown <kbrown@cornell.edu>]

[Redirected from the cygwin list, 
https://cygwin.com/pipermail/cygwin/2021-December/250149.html]

On 12/7/2021 3:08 PM, Ken Brown wrote:
> On 12/5/2021 3:50 AM, Achim Gratz wrote:
>> Autoconf upstream has stated that the 2.7x releases are not fully
>> backwards compatible.  Cygwin therefore chose to provide a new
>> autoconf2.7 package (keeping autoconf2.5 available) and modifying the
>> wrapper script to allow packaging systems to set WANT_AUTOCONF=2.7 to
>> select a newer autoconf version.  The default (when no explicit
>> WANT_AUTOCONF is set) is still "2.5", which selects autoconf version
>> 2.69 on Cygwin.
> 
> As you explained on IRC earlier today, what you meant is that the default for 
> packages built via cygport is still 2.5.
> 
>> The default will change to "2.7" after some period of
>> testing.
>>
>> Cygwin package maintainers are encouraged to set WANT_AUTOCONF=2.7 in
>> their cygport configuration or in individual cygport files in order to
>> check for regressions.

I wonder if it would be better to make the default 2.7 in order to more strongly 
encourage maintainers to try the latter.  They can always set WANT_AUTOCONF=2.5 
if they can't make it work.  But I would bet that most difficulties that arise 
have already been found and fixed by Fedora.

Ken