Re: Old Flex version in FC5?

[John Ellson <ellson research att com>]

Ralf Ertzinger wrote:
> Hi.
>
> On Thu, 04 May 2006 14:40:22 +0200, Ralf Corsepius wrote:
>
>
> > * Many flex versions > 2.5.4a had been too broken to be usable
> > * Many flex versions > 2.5.4a had been too incompatible to flex-2.5.x
> > * Many major packages have not been prepared for flex > 2.5.x
>
>
> It can't be that bad if Debian stable uses 2.5.31.

flex-2.5..31 on Debian definitely broke graphviz builds.

I just tried flex-2.5.33 from  Sourceforge on an x86_64 Rawhide box
and that particular problem seems to be fixed,  but I would have to
test all platform builds to be more confident.


Problems with flex and bison can be particularly obscure and result in
strange breakages in stable code.    Just this week I ran into a problem
in bison that only showed up when bison products generated on FC5
were compiled on Windows. (Fixed promptly by Roland McGrath.  Thanks 
again.).

These tools need extra care when updating.

John