an update to automake-1.11?

[Jim Meyering]

Mark McLoughlin wrote:
...
> The issue here is weighing up the benefit of a 1.11 update to developers
> using F-9 and F-10 versus the risk of breaking existing working builds.
> It sounds automake has improved its level of compatibility between
> releases, so the risk is relatively low. Even still, I'd be inclined to
> say that developers who want 0.11 should install it themselves or update
> to F-11.

That would make it inconvenient to use the new features in any project
that does development (runs automake) on the still-very-useful F10.
It is precisely this barrier-to-adoption that we want to overcome.
These days, there is no excuse not to provide the very latest stable
releases of automake and autoconf on F10 and F11.  Yes, they really
are that stable and robust.  Besides, these are developer-only tools.
They are not like libraries.  They typically aren't even installed on
end-user systems.  The only potential penalty is a failure (not to build
from source, but) to rebuild after rerunning autoconf.  Pretty minor,
considering all of the good reasons to upgrade, for both the developer
and the eventual user.

I try to accommodate progressiveness, when the benefit appears to outweigh
the risk.  Here, I see little risk.  So far, I know of no incompatibility
that would require any manual work.  But even if there are a few corner
cases, anyone who cannot find the time for whatever small changes are
needed to update to automake-1.11 can install an older version and
use that.

By the way, has anyone reported a problem that can be attributed
to this new version of automake?  (we won't count the one involving
gnome-common-2.26 ;-)

It's like replacement functions in gnulib: the target systems with
working functions pays no penalty at all, but a system with a missing
or broken function has to endure the cost of the replacement or wrapper.