Subject: Re: bug#16057: Non-parallel test suite API changes in 1.13

From: Behdad Esfahbod <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 05 Dec 2013 23:25:56 -0500

On 13-12-05 06:25 PM, Stefano Lattarini wrote:
>> For good or for bad, there
>> > are enough developers that think of the autotools as magic black boxes
>> > that they are unwilling to use any version not shipped by their distro.
>> >
> I'm not willing to go to great lengths to support such attitude in the
> developers, sorry.

You broke backwards compatibility.  That was a bug.  You could spend two hours
and fix it.  Instead, you decided to carry the bug forward and force every
maintainer to deal with it.

All you need to do to fix it is, if TESTS_ENVIRONMENT is defined but not
AM_TESTS_ENVIRONMENT, assume old behavior, and possibly print a warning.  I
don't see how that's going to "great lengths", and mind you, to fix a bug you
introduced, not to support any attitudes in other people whatsoever.

The irony is, now we need to write code to achieve portability over different
versions of automake, so we can enjoy portability to different versions of
makes and whatever else automake promises to do. :)

Anyway, I can find workaround for my own cases.  I just find the attitude a
step in the wrong direction.

Cheers,
-- 
behdad
http://behdad.org/