Subject: bug#67796: Automake is not compatible with older Autoconfs we provide

From: Giovanni Biscuolo <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2024 19:38:23 +0100

Hi,

Ekaitz Zarraga <[email-masked]> writes:

[...]

>>> We have automake packaged, but it's not compatible with older autoconf
>>> versions so autoconf is not very usable at this point.
>>>
>>> ```
>>> Ekaitz@tuxedo ~/projects/nlnet/gcc/libstdc++-v3 (riscv)$ guix shell
>>> automake [email-masked]
>> 
>> is there a reason you need to "pin" to the 2.64 version?
>
> I had one, I was working on GCC bootstrapping...

oh OK :-)

> It's not a big deal if we just remove the older versions.

but if they are needed for bootstrapping they should be kept around, no?

> The problem I wanted to make us notice is we were keeping the 2.64 
> version and we didn't really provide any compatible automake, so the 
> [email-masked] was almost useless.

I'm not very familiar with Autoconf and Automake (nor with
bootstrapping): is there a "compatibility table" around?  I quickly had
a look to the respective manuals but I was not able to find one.

> If no package uses those, it's ok to remove. I can always time-machine 
> around the problem.

OK old packages can always (almost) be time-machined back but if they
are needed for bootstrapping (for sexample if your work on GCC
bootstrapping is succesful) they should be in Guix proper, no?

is this a bug? :-)

Thanks for your work! Gio'

-- 
Giovanni Biscuolo

Xelera IT Infrastructures